


The Unfortunate Life of Dakota Kim

by RIP_Ashton



Series: The Life of Dakota Kim [1]
Category: EXO (Band), 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: EXO is great and I love them, I can be a BTS stan and an EXO stan fight me, I suck at summeries so pls just read the book, I think it's good but it's prob not that good, I'm a slut for soulmate AU's, I'm sorry if this is trash, Just needed a bad guy besides feelings, Lord I need help, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Polyamory, Self-Harm, Slow Burn, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, The k pop industry is corrupt, Time Skips, a bunch of gay people tbh, also some past mentions of attemepted suicide, bighit are little shits in this, but I actually like them in real life, but in the past, so I combinded a shit ton of ideas, there might be smut in the future so just watch out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2018-08-16 14:41:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 29,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8106271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RIP_Ashton/pseuds/RIP_Ashton
Summary: In a world where finding your soulmate can be as easy as taking a walk in the park or as hard as finding the fountain of youth, Dakota is just trying to find a way to survive.





	1. Prologue

Growing up, I always thought my parent’s love story was the cutest. They met on an airplane, which was on it’s way to New York City. My dad, who was Korean, was on his way there for medical school, while my mom was going there in an attempt to bring her dreams for broadway to reality. Not noticing that the timers on their wrists changed from 2 years, 56 days, 3 hours and 22 minutes suddenly drop down to 20 minutes and now counting down to zero. But when my dad turned to say, “Hello,” to his seatmate, their eyes met and they felt the spark deep within their chests, and he knew that she was his soulmate as well.

 

When I think of their love story, I get extremely happy. I know they’re soulmates, but I’ve never met a couple that was as much in love as my parents were. My mother got to teach my dad english, and in return, he taught her Korean. Twenty years and four kids later, and they seem to fall deeper in love every day, if that was even possible. They’ve had so many road bumps in their life. Two years after they had met each other, my mom found out that she couldn’t have kids of her own. But they didn’t let that stop them from having children. They adopted me shortly after, from a teen mom who was dumb and got pregnant and didn’t want to keep the baby. When I was 6, they adopted twin boys, Travis and Tyler. And about four years ago, my family adopted a little girl named Sophia. 

 

Even though we’re all adopted, they treat us like we’re their own flesh and blood. To me, they’ve always been the family I knew, seeing as I was adopted as a baby. The younger kids, however, were a bit older when they got adopted. They remember the broken homes and mutilated pasts that they came from. It’s safe to say that everyone is much happier where they are now.

 

But because we’re all adopted, we didn’t get a clue on to what our soulmate identifying traits were going to be. Sometimes, but not all times, you tends to have the same trait from one of your ancestors. My dad didn’t though, so he was surprised when he woke up on the morning of his 9th birthday with a clock counting down to when he was going to meet his soulmate.

 

On Sophie’s 9th birthday, she woke up with black streaked through her cherry red hair, telling us that she had the hair-hair trait. So that meant her soulmate had black hair, and whenever they dye their hair, It would change in her hair, and vice versa. On the twin’s 9th birthday, they woke up with shapes on the outside of their right hands. Travis had a baby blue heart and Tyler had a white diamond.

 

However for me, on the morning of my 9th birthday, nothing happened. My black eyes stayed black. Nothing happened to the coloring of my hair. No symbols or shapes or clocks or even compases appeared on my mocha colored skin. I was totally convinced that I had no soulmate, but my parent’s wouldn’t listen, still believing that I had a soulmate somewhere out there in the world, but that simply was not possible. 

 

I just had to try and accept the fact that I was going to grow up alone with 20 cats as a crazy cat lady. I knew that no matter what was going to happen, my parents would love me, but a part of me still felt bad for not having a soulmate and not being able to give them grandchildren.

 

However, one day, when I was 16 years old, the unimaginable happen. My right eye, which was normally right, changed into a deep red. It was just my right eye though, which was not the norm for the eye-hair trait. However, I didn’t notice it until a few days later, but let’s be honest here, I was so excited over the fact that I actually had a soul mate. I asked my mom why my left eye was still black, and she didn’t have any clue.

 

So the next day, she made an appointment with the soulmate specialist, and the following week, I was sat with my mother in the office, tapping my leg in nervousness. My mom placed her hand on the shaking leg, successfully stopping me. I looked at her, and she gave me a reassuring smile, which made the nervousness basically go away.

 

“Dakota Kim?” Someone said. I turned my head around, and the nurse who had said my name smiled at me, but it was difficult for me to see because of the dark sunglasses on my face, which was preventing other people from seeing my eyes. My mom stood up and grabbed my hand to try and help me up, even though I could stand up perfectly fine by myself.

 

The nurse led us to an office in the back of the building, and while my mom ended up sitting in a chair against the wall, I was sat in the chair right in front of the Doctor’s desk. She gave me a kind smile.

 

“So Dakota,” she started, “What brings you here today?” At her question, I looked down, which made my long black hair cover my face. I lifted my hand to remove the glasses from my face, but I heisatated. “You know you can trust me, right?” She said, noticing that I was nervous. I finally got the courage to pull the glasses off of my face and flip my head back up, so she could see the colors.

 

The moment she saw them, she gasped. The nervousness that had riddled my body in the waiting room came back with a burning passion. “What?” I asked. “Am I dying?” I was almost to hysterics at this point. The only thing that brought me back from the panic was the soothing sensation of my mom, who had apparently stood up from her seat, rubbing my back and shoulders.

 

The doctor gave out a breathy chuckle. “No Honey, you’re not going to die. It just means that you have two soulmates.” I could hear my mom take in a sharp breath from behind me, and then she relaxed.

 

“But why did this happen now? Was I just a late bloomer?” I questioned her. She shook her head.

 

“They probably have black hair, just like you do.” She explained. “When you turned nine, the soulmate identifying trait did occur, but seeing as you have black eyes naturally, and they have black hair, a color change didn’t really happen.”

 

After spending the next thirty minutes on asking her questions and he giving me the answers, some of them not what I wanted to hear. I didn’t like it. It was already extremely difficult to find one soulmate in your lifetime, and now I had to find two.

 

On the car ride home, my mom asked me a good question. “Do you want to dye your hair as well? To let your soulmates know that you’re here and not dead in a hole somewhere.” I didn’t think about it until she asked me the question, but now that I did think about it, I actually didn’t think it would be a bad idea. So I nodded my head while making a noise of agreement.

 

“Oh fun! What color did you want?”

 

Our car was stopped at a red light. I played with my dark hair, wondering what color would look best with my mitch-matched eyes and my mocha skin color. I also thought about how my soulmates would look. One still had black eyes, while the other had one black eye and a red eye, just like me. It made me want to do something unique.

 

I noticed the lavender color of my sweater that I was wearing, and how it actually looked, contrasting on my skin, but still managing to look nice. 

 

The light turned green, and my mom waited a short second before moving again. “What about a lavender shade?” I inquired, turning my head to look at her, even though her head was turned forward so she could drive. I saw her shrug her shoulders.

“That’s entirely up to you, Kota.” She responds. I turn back around to look out the window, seeing all of the different colors just flash by. The green of the grass. The blue color of the sky. Even a bright hot pink color of someone’s hair. It was strange to think that If I dyed my hair, that two other people’s eyes would change to match that exact shade. But I was ready, to let my soulmates know I was here.


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dakota has a very eventful day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So speaking dialogs that are italicized are when people are speaking Korean.

In about two weeks, I was going to graduate high school. In three weeks, I was going to be on a plane ride to with my family to South Korea. We we’re going to be visiting my grandparents on my father’s side. It was also going to be a graduation present for me. Since my dad was Korean, everyone in our family spoke the language. The younger kids were still learning, but I’ve been speaking Korean and english since I was a baby. It was still somewhat difficult to write the language, but thankfully, I’ve never had to do that much.

And in order to prepare us for our trip, our dad had us speaking nothing but Korean at home and to each other whenever we got the chance. My mom was struggling, even though she’s know my dad my dad for 20 years and has been speaking the language for 15 years. English was still her first language. Don’t get me wrong, she’s good at communicating, but she just wasn’t on the same level as Dad and I were.

Dad and I always communicated in Korean. It made for some awkward moments whenever we talked on the phone, because It wasn’t normal for the 5’1 black girl with purple hair to speak the language. Some of the kids at school picked on me, but it didn’t happen very often. The twins were freshmen this year, so they tried to threaten every person who just so happened to look at me in the wrong way. It didn’t really work though, seeing as they were less threatening than a bunny rabbit.

It was Friday, ten minutes from the end of the school day. I didn’t have a last hour, so I sat in the cafeteria. I couldn’t go home because the twins did have a last hour, and I was their ride home. So I sat here, just scrolling through Tumblr on my phone. A majority of the blogs I followed were Korean, so I could get better at reading the language. I saw a few different things as I scrolled. A screencap from a Korean Drama, some romantic love quotes in English, pictures of K-pop Idols and groups. I didn’t like to listen to K-pop much. The only times I really listened to it was whenever I was driving with my dad. He loved K-pop so much, it was concerning considering he’s a 40 year old male.

I scrolled through a few more posts, involving pictures from a band named EXO and other band, before stopping at a picture of two boys. They were hugging, obviously close. One had black hair with cresent eyes and chubby cheeks and a beautiful smile. The other had silver hair and a gummy smile. The reason why I had stopped on this picture was because they stood out to me. They had the exact same hair color that I’m guessing my soulmates had, considering my right eyes was a silver grey color and the left was back to it’s normal black eyes. My mind instantly connected them with being my soulmates, but I knew that it couldn’t be true, seeing as their black eyes didn’t match my lavender hair, I knew that they weren’t the ones.

The final bell of the school day rang out through the building, and I picked up my binders and books before placing them into my backpack. My phone found it’s home in the back pocket of my jeans. I needed the meet up the twins by the front door, which weren’t too far away from the cafeteria.

The rush of students came and went, and I was left standing there by the doors. They were usually here by now, but I was still here, twinless. I waited for five minutes, watching the clock on the wall slowly tick. They still weren’t here. Where could the possibly be? I had to contact one of them. Travis came first alphabetically in my phone, so I called him.

His phone rang for two seconds before he picked up. “Dakota!” He shouted, startling me with the volume. I almost dropped my phone, but I stumbled and caught it before it hit the floor.

“What?” I ask, concerned by the tone of his voice. “Tyler met his soulmate and now they’re hugging and crying on the floor!”

I actually dropped my phone on the floor this time, my eyes wide with shock. Travis voiced out my name a few times. I could hear it, but it was faint and not enough to bring me out of my stupor right away.

Approxomatly a minute later, I broke out of my surprise and picked up my phone that was rested by my feet, the call still connected through.

“Where are you at?” I asked.

“By the choir room.”

That’s all I needed to know before I broke off into a sprint to the fine arts area of the school. It didn’t take too long to find them, seeing as there was a couple on the ground, and I recognized one of the two to be my brother. I knew the other from the choir class that we shared together in the morning. Tyler was sobbing into the other guy’s shoulder, and there seemed to be no sign of him stopping.

Travis was standing against a wall, holding his phone in his right hand. Seeing that the current situation wasn’t as bad as I first thought, I joined him. “How long have they been like this?” I inquired. He looked at the clock on his phone before answering.

“Almost ten minutes.”

“Well I have to be at work in forty minutes so we might have to break this up soon.” I told him, hoping that the pair on the ground would hear me and stop, but the wailing noises coming from Tyler didn’t go away.

Eventually, the small crowd that they had gathered dispersed, but they were still on the floor. Tyler had stopped crying at this point, but he wouldn’t let go of the other kid. It didn’t look like he was complaining, holding my brother closer to his body. From where they were positioned, I could clearly see the white diamonds on both of their hands.

“I’ll have Dad come and get you.” I told Travis, noticing that they weren’t going to breaking apart any time soon. “I have to go to work and I just can’t wait around here for them to be done with their cuddle fest.”

He nodded. “I’ll call Dad when they’re done.” I pushed myself away from the wall. I made my way over to Tyler and bent over him and kissed him on the head.

“I hope you have a good time.” I whispered to him. “I love you.” He smiled at me, letting me know that he had heard me.  I did the same thing to Travis before I turned to leave the three boys. My phone, which was still in my hand, went off not even thirty seconds later. It was some Korean song, which told me that it was my dad, seeing as he set his own ringtone.

“ _Appa_!” I exclaimed, remembering I had to speak Korean.

“ _Where are you at_?” He questioned, voice laced with concerned. “ _You’re supposed to be home by now_.”

I sighed, not really feeling like it was my position to tell him, but I knew my dad would throw a fit if he didn’t know what was going on. “ _Tyler met his soulmate and now he refuses to leave him_.” I told, and I could hear the shocked gasp the moment I said the first few words. “ _Travis said he would call you when they were ready to be picked up, but I have to be to work in twenty minutes so I couldn’t just wait around_.”

Now, I was almost to my car, which was standing in the middle of a recently emptied parking lot. “ _Okay. Maybe I can pick up Tyler’s soulmate too. Invite him over for a family dinner_?” I smiled at his statement.

“ _You’re going to scare the poor boy away, Appa_!” I exclaimed, chuckling.

“ _That’s the goal_.” I laughed out loud at that, getting a few weird looks from a few stragglers that were just standing and talking to people around the parking lot, but I was used to the weird looks people gave me. Especially when my eye first changed color.

My soulmates loved dying their hair. There was one time in my life where my right eye was a mint green and my left was a bright pumpkin orange. They didn’t quite match my lavender hair, but I didn’t quite find myself caring. I bet my soulmates looked good with their different colored eyes. They’ve had one lavender eye for almost two and a half years. I have a hair appointment tomorrow, and I was still deciding weither or not I was going to just fix my roots or to change my hair color in general. I was actually getting quite tired of the lavender.

“ _So how late are you working tonight_?” My father asked, bringing me out of my own thoughts and reminding me that he was still on the phone with me.

“ _I get out at eight, so expect me at home around nine. I have to go to the store and get a few things for the trip_.” I told him. I opened my back seat door and threw my purse and backpack in there before placing myself in the front drivers seat.

“ _Okay. Don’t forget to get some groceries as well. We’re going to need some snack to get us through the week. You know how hungry the twins get_.”  I sighed, knowing that he was right. I don’t know how the twins did it, but they ate and ate, and never gained any weight. I wish I could have the same trait, but I don’t.

Growing up, I’ve always been self concious. Even though I was short, I was thicker. I didn’t start filling out my body till about three years ago, and even now, I still get waves of self lothing. I just hoped my soulmates looked past everything that was wrong with me.

It didn’t take too long to drive to work, and in the time, my dad had said his farewell and hung up. I worked as a waitress in a small resturaunt, owned by an elderly couple. I didn’t make a lot of money, but I didn’t really need it, considering that my family had a lot of money. I just wanted the work expirence in a kitchen, seeing as I wanted to be a chef ever since I was a small kid.

To be honest, I loved my job. I met some of my best friends there, and the owners have basically become my own grandparents. I ocasionally had to deal with a shit customer, but they never really showed up. Everyone was kind to me.

I pulled into the parking lot of the resturaunt and parked in a spot farther away from the building, letting the closer spots be open for actual paying customers, which wasn’t me. In my trunk, I had a change of clothes. While Margie didn’t care what we wore, I tended to dress more professionally, with a white button up and some black skinny jeans on most days I worked. It matched my apron and my hair and my eyes.

The door to the employee enterance was wide open, letting the warm summer air in. In the back of the building, there was an office, a break room, bathrooms, and a dressing room, along with the kitchen. I entered the dressing room and quickly changed, then pulling my lavender hair into a low pony tail before placing my stuff in my locker and grabbing my apron on the way out.

Margie sat on a stool in the kitchen, and she was placed in a way that she instantly saw me the moment I walked into the kitchen. A very large smile broke out on her face.

“Hey Dakota!” She said to me. I nodded to her with a smile on my face as well. “How was school?”

I groaned, remembering the events of not even an hour ago. “Tyler met his soulmate today.” I told her, and she gasped.

“Really?”

“Yeah. He’s a junior in my choir class. I’ve never really talked to him before, but I guess I’m gonna have to start talking to him. He’s probably going to be my future brother-in-law.” I responded, grabbing man order pad and a pen to get ready for my shift.

“I’m glad he met his soulmate. Now there is only three of you left to find your soulmates!” She exclaimed, hopping off the stool to follow me out to the lobby, where a group of guys were standing. They had just entered the building and were looking around. I didn’t get a good look at any of them, but I noticed their different colored hair.

“Dakota, we have guests!” Margie basically yelled at me, even though I was standing right next to her.

I gave her a look. “No duh.” I responded. She then made a shooing motion with her hands, which was her way of telling me to go seat and serve the group of guys. I sighed, not really wanting to deal with the group of people, but I went over there anyway.

“Hi! How many people?” I asked. My voice was a fake cheery. The tall blonde one looked at me for a second, which made it possible for me to get a better look at him. He was obviously Korean.

“There’s seven of us.” He responds, and I could hear the slightest accent in his voice, which was familiar to how my dad sounded when he spoke English. It made me smile, and I knew this was going to be a great chance to practice my Korean speaking.


	3. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dakota has a shit day pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY BUT THIS COMEBACK HAS HIT ME RIGHT IN THE HONEY NUT FEELIOS I'm gonna KMS but I can't rip me
> 
> Words that are italicized are when they're speaking korean. I'm learning how to speak korean right now but I'm not that good yet so.. yeah... They're speaking korean.

My head nodded and I waved for the group of men to follow me, but not before grabbing seven menus. They all followed me. I could hear a few of the people muttering in Korean, but I could only make out small parts of their conversation, and it wasn’t enough to piece anything together.

I led them to a large eight person table in towards the back of the resturaunt. I looked at all of them. A few had blonde hair, two had brown hair, one had black hair, and the last had grey hair, almost silver. I recognized him from the picture I saw on Tumblr earlier, but I didn’t particually care.

They all sat down, and one of the blonde ones pushed the extra not needed chair against the wall where it was out of their way.

I looked at the guy who had spoken to me before. “Do you all speak Korean?” I asked. Even though I had heard them speaking it before, I wanted to make sure. He nodded his head. “Good! So do I!” I smiled, and he gave me a confused look. I pulled out my notepad and pen after giving the menus to everyone in the group. “ _Hello! My name is Dakota Kim! I’m going to be your waitress for today._ ” I spoke in Korean, and they all looked decently surprised. I almost laughed out loud at their faces. “ _What would you like to drink?”_

The tall blonde who spoke English was the first to get over his shock, and he gave me a huge smile. “ _I’ll have a water._ ” He told me. I returned the large smile and wrote his order down. They all eventually got over their shock and gave me their drink requests, ranging from a few more waters, soda pop, and even some Hot Chocolate, despite the heat outside.

I walked back to the kitchen, where Margie was sitting on the stool again, watching her husband, Daniel, prepare a meal for another order. The drink machine was in the corner of the kitchen, positioned in kind of an awkward angle, but you could still reach it with ease.

“So are any of them your soulmates?” She hounded me almost instantly. I sighed.

“You know, you ask this question every single time I come back after taking an order, and the answer is always the same. No.”

She huffed and stomped back to her stool. I loved the women, but she was honestly so infuriating, especially at times like this.

I got all of the drink situated and placed on a platter, which I balanced on my arm before heading back to the table that held all of the men. Whatever they were talking about fell dead, and a hush fell over the group. It wasn’t hard to remember what drink each person had gotten, and I was quickly onto taking their food orders. The orders were quite random, ranging from breakfast foods to hamburgers to steaks. I went to go back to the kitchen, but was stopped almost imediatly.

“ _Wait, Don’t go!_ ” One exclaimed. I turned my body back around.

“ _What?”_ I asked, wondering if I had forgotten someone’s order.

“ _You should sit with us!_ ” One of the blonde ones shouted, his face broken out into a large, boxy smile. It almost made me want to give in, but I was working, and I still had two hours until I had my break. So I shook my head.

“ _I can’t I’m working._ ” I responded before turning back to head to the back. I handed the order to Margie through the window that connected the kitchen and the dining area.

“What did they want you to do?” She questioned. I didn’t want to answer her, but I knew that if I didn’t, she would harrass me until I told her.

I sighed. “They wanted me to sit with them, but I told them that I was work-”

“A group of attractive men walk in here and ask you to sit with them and you turned them down?!” She shouted, making everyone in the resturant look at us. I shushed her. “Don’t you dare shush me young Lady! Go back there and sit with them!”

“But-”

“No buts! Go!” She exclaimed, and I turned to do the walk of shame back to the table. “I’ll bring you a chocolate milkshake Hun!” I sighed for what seemed the millionth time today. I knew I was setting myself up for failure the moment I told her what the group had asked me.

It was the same blonde that saw me coming back. He grabbed the extra chair that they had moved out over the way and placed it between himself and the one with the grey hair.

“ _So tell us about yourself!_ ” The one with the brown hair said the moment my butt made contact with the chair. It almost made me fall off from the volume of it.

“ _Hobi!_ ” One said with a scolding tone. “ _Don’t scare her! She doesn’t even know our names_!” The guys smile dropped with the realization, but it quickly came back.

“ _My name is J-Hope. I’m your hope!_ ” He exclaimed, making peace signs with both of his hands and placing them next to his face. He seemed to be too happy for his own good, but it was refreshing.

The blonde that had scolded J-Hope before smiled and turned to me. “ _Hello. My name is Jin._ ” He bowed the best he could from his spot in his chair. I bowed in return, trying to be kind.

There was another guy with a darker shade of brown hair. “ _My name is Jeongguk. It’s nice to meet you!_ ” He had a smile on his face, that made him look a little bit like a bunny. His eyes were a honey color, which struck me the most. It matched the shade of color that the boxy smiled man sitting next to them. I muttered a response, and they were on to the next introduction.

“ _My name is Taehyung!”_ He basically shouted, bringing the attention of the entire building onto us again.

If you looked close enough, you could see that Taehyung’s eyes we the same shade as Jeongguk’s hair. They sat unusually close to each other, and every chance Taehyung got, he would touch Jeongguk’s thigh or arms or even the face. It was pretty obvious that they were soulmates.

The tall blonde that had spoken english to me at the beginning was next to introduce himself. “ _My name is Namjoon._ ” I smiled at him.

The guy with black hair refused to look at me. “ _Uhhh… My name is Jimin._ ” He was really shy, his eyes not leaving his hands that were fidgeting in his lap. It made my heart flutter from how cute he was.

The last to introduce himself was the one with silver hair, and just like the raven haired man before him, his eyes never lifted to meet my gaze. “ _Yoongi._ ” Is all he said, his voice low and almost a monotone, which ended up sending chills down my spine.

My attention was taken from him and back to J-Hope. “ _So tell us about yourself now!”_ He exclaimed, so energetic that it almost shocked me out of my seat again. I didn’t really want to tell my story, but I couldn’t exactly not tell them at this point.

I took a long, deep breath and opened my mouth, ready to tell them the stuff they wanted to hear about me, but before I could talk, Margie brought me the milkshake she had promised, made in the best way that only she could manage. I loved it. And I currently loved it more because of the fact that it was prolonging what they wanted me to do.

“Thanks Margie!” I replied in English before taking a large drink from an even bigger cup. I looked back at them.

“ _Why are your eyes two different colors?_ ” Taehyung asked out of nowhere, causing me to almost spit out my milkshake. Thankfully, I didn’t, but I did end up choking on it. It was difficult to breath.

I coughed, trying to get the milkshake unstuck from my throat. A pair of warm hands patted and rubbed my back, trying to help me. While I was busy dying, I could hear the other people yelling at Taehyung.

“ _Are you okay?”_ The voice the belonged to the hands was deep. I struggled to nod my head while turning to look at him.

But the moment our eyes met, the spark that my parents went on and on about was felt deep within my chest. I gasped, which sent me into another coughing fit, making me start to choke again.

Yoongi’s eyes, which I hadn’t seen before because of him looking down, were different colors. He had one black eyes, just like me. But where I had a silver eye to match his own hair, he had a lavender eye that was the same color as my hair. Jimin came up behind Yoongi, who was gasping for air as well. I turned my head, at the same time he looked at me. His lavender and silver eyes made another spark appear down in my chest. But instead of gasping like a fish out of water once again, the world just went black.


	4. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crap day continues and Dakota is 100% done with people's shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> School is so fun... #I'mActuallyDeadOnTheInside. But it's okay. I don't have an official uploading schedule, but expect a chapter every week. And remember, words that are italicized are when people are speaking Korean.

When I came to, there was a group of people surrounding me. I felt closed in, the people too close and too loud, and it made me want to pass out again, but before I could close my eyes again and pretend not to be awake, someone noticed.

“She’s awake!”

I groaned. I didn’t want to be up just yet. The people were suddenly harrassing me, crowding my body even more than it already was.

“Please… Go away…” I muttered out, voice raspy and throat sore from choking earlier. Why was I even choking in the first place? Why was I passed out on the floor? Where was I even at? I remember working and serving. I don’t even remember fainting. The crowd around me dispersed, except for Margie and two other people. I recognized them. Their hair color and their eyes. Everything came crashing back to me. The group of guys that came to eat at the resturant. Taehyung demanding that I sit with them, and then the question he asked not even ten minutes later. I remember meeting not one, but both of my soulmates. Now I remember fainting… “How long was I out?”

“About ten minutes.” Margie answered, fingers running through my hair, which did a pretty good job at calming me. “We were about to call an ambulance. You weren’t waking up.” She almost sounded like she was crying. I felt bad for making her worry about me.

“I’m sorry.” I grumbled out, closing my eyes so I didn’t have to see everyone staring at me. I knew the group of guys were still looking, despite me telling them to go away.

“Don’t be sorry Hunny. It wasn’t your fault.”

“It kind if was.” I retorted.

I didn’t notice someone grab my hand. It was small, but still larger than my tiny hands. I opened my eyes again to find Jimin. His eyes met mine, and he smiled at me, the color of his eyes almost hidden by his cheeks. His smile was on of the best things I’ve ever seen. I smiled back, but it was weak, seeing as I was still a little out of it from passing out.

“ _How are you feeling?_ ” He asked me. His thumb was rubbing circles into my hand, and it was a bit distracting, but honestly, more comfortaining than Margie’s fingers running through my hair.

_“I’m okay. Just a bit shocked._ ” I told him, lacing my thin fingers with his. Even though I had just met him, I felt a connection with him. I felt like I’ve known him for my entire life, even though I know nothing but his name. I guess It was just the soulmate bond that we had.

“ _Can you sit up now?_ ”

I nodded my head. He started to help me get up then. I looked around. I was still in the resturant, but I was moved to the break room.

I got slightly light headed when my body was vertical again. “ _Woah!_ ” Jimin exclaimed, wrapping his arms around my body and pulling me closer to his own. My head was rested on his chest, and his scent took over my senses. It smelt almost of oranges, but not quite. There was something that I couldn’t quite place my finger on. I just knew that I wanted to stay here forever, in his embrace. I wrapped my arms around his middle, and Jimin tightened his hold around my shoulders, resting his head on top of mine, which was on his chest.

I could see Margie looking confused, but when she noticed the eye colors, it quickly went away. “I called your parents. They’re on their way to come pick you up.”

I nodded my head against Jimin’s chest, thinking about the day so far. I’ve had so many questions and not enough people to answer any of them. “ _Where’s Yoongi?_ ” I questioned, voice muffled by his surprisingly toned body.

“ _Right behind you_.”

I lifted my head and turned. I saw Yoongi standing behind us, just where Jimin said he was going to be. He looked like he was awkwardly standing with no idea what to do. I let go of Jimin and turned around, coming to wrap his arms around Yoongi. He was shocked and hesitated for a second, but he quickly got over it and embraced me with his thin arms around my waist.

I jumped when I felt another pair of arms rest on my side, the hands rested on Yoongi’s hips, chin resting on my shoulder. It could be no one else besides Jimin.

I was surrounded by warmth, and the smell from both of them combined made me even more light headed than I already was.

We stood here, not moving in the slightest. Just standing in peace, hearing the beating of Yoongi’s heart. I don’t know how much time I spent standing here, but it was long enough for my parents to show up. “Dakota!” My mom shouted, and she pulled me out of the embrace between the two guys and into her own. From where I was, I could see the group of men eye’s widen. My mom with her pale skin and blonde hair pulled back into a tight bun. She was still in her dance clothes from the class she had gotten out of. My dad had dressed normally, and I just noticed that Sophia was holding his hand.

“ _What happened?_ ” My dad asked, speaking Korean. Jimin looked surprised.

“ _Didn’t Margie tell you?_ ” I questioned, confused. He shook his head. _“I fainted and was almost out for ten minutes._ ”

He shushed me. “ _I already knew that part!_ ” He exclaimed. “ _Do you know why you fainted? And why are you hugging these people? I’ve never seen them before!_ ” Dad was being over protective, like always, so his Korean was a bit rushed, making a bit hard to understand, but I still quickly understood what he was saying.

“ _Appa!_ ” I started, “ _I fainted out of shock. And the reason why you’ve never met these guys before is because I just met them today._ ”

I saw the anger flash onto his face. “ _Then why are you-_ ” He went to go on, but then looked at the three of us. How our hair matched each other’s hair. His anger left his face. “ _Two in one day!_ ” He exclaimed. “ _Two out of my four babies met their soulmates today! I can’t believe this!_ ” His head spun around quickly, and the next thing we knew, he was out on the floor, unconscious.


	5. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dakota's wild day comes to an end and she spends it with her soulmates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Didn't realize how bad I was a writing till I wrote this chapter, but I made a commitment to this story and I'm going to finish it, even if it is shit.
> 
> Italicized words are people speaking in Korean. Hopefully this will be the last time I have to remind because from here on, everyone speaks Korean.

When I thought about today and what would happen, I would never, ever, in a million years, think that it would go this way. I woke up, did my hair and makeup like any other day. I ate breakfast with my family like every other day. I went to school with the twins, and later, took the twins out for lunch at Burger King for lunch. It was like any other day. I should have known the moment Tyler met his soulmate that the day was going to quickly go to Hell in a handbasket.

In the span of about an hour and a half, I worked with and got harrassed by an old lady, served a group of men who spoke Korean, got harrassed by the old lady again, sat with the group of men, and met my soulmates. A little bit later, after I fainted and woke up again, my own family came to the resturant and it was my father’s turn to faint.

And now, my recently found soulmates were helping their friends carry my dad to our car. “Spend as much time as you want with them, Kota.” My mom had said to me. “Just be home by the end of the weekend. You have school Monday.” She had winked at me, and my face flushed at what she had said. Realistacly, I knew I was going to be home by the end of the day.

“I love you Kota!” Sophia had exclaimed as she ran up and wrapped herself around me, her thin arms almost breaking me, despite me being bigger than her. “Come home soon!” She had made it sound like I was going to be moving away for the rest of my life.

“I will, Princess. I’ll be back before tomorrow.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.” I assured her. With Dad passed out in the passenger’s seat and Sophia in the back, my mom took her place in the driver’s seat and waved as she drove off in the direction of home. I waved back at her, along with everyone else that was standing in the parking lot. We watched them disappear over the horizon.

Jimin came up behind me and pulled me into his chest, successfully giving me a back hug, and I wasn’t complaining. Jimin seemed to be comfortable with hugging me, even though we had just met today. Yoongi was a bit awkward around me, but it seemed to be just the way he was.

“ _Do you you wanna come with us so we get to know each other?_ ” He asked, voice right in my ear, which caused me to shiver and nod.

“ _Where would we go_?” I asked him.

I could feel him shrug. “ _Back to the hotel that we’re staying at?_ ” He phrased it more like a question, making it sound like he was asking me to come back the hotel with the group of them. I made a noise in agreement.

“We don’t have enough room in the van for her to come with us.” Jin reminded Jimin.

“ _I have a car._ ” I told them. I pointed to my small silver car in the back parking lot. “ I _could drive there if you gave me the address._ ”

I felt Jimin smile from where he was on my shoulder. “ _My soulmate is so smart!_ ” He exclaims, hugging me closer and tighter. A smile of my own appeared on my face. At this, Yoongi walked over, stood in front of me, and grabbed my hands. He still seemed a bit awkward about the whole situation, but I could tell he was trying his best, and that was all that mattered in my opinion.

“ _Yoongi, Jimin. Do you want to ride with her? Give her company and the directions to the hotel._ ” Namjoon recomended. They both agreed without a second to spare.

“ _Let’s go!_ ” Jimin shouted, stealing one of my hands from Yoongi and grabbing Yoongi’s other hand and pulled us over, basically dragging us to my car. “ _It’ll be a party!_ ” He exclaimed, laughing. I was giggling along with him, and Yoongi was having a hell of a time trying not to laugh.

“ _Let’s go!_ ” I yelled, laughing to the point of almost crying. We got to the car quickly, and we all waved to the group of people that were quickly making their way back into the resturant, probably to finish eating or to pay for their food. I went to go open the door to my car, but Jimin decided to be a gentleman and opened the door for me. “ _Thank you, my good sir._ ” I said in my worst british accent I could do while still speaking Korean.

I went to go pull my keys out of my pocket as I sat down, but I realized that they weren’t there. Both my phone and my keys were still in my locker inside of the break room. “I _’ll be right back!_ ” I shouted. “ _I forgot my keys inside!_ ” I broke off into a sprint, through the employee enterance. Margie saw me run in.

“I thought you were leaving?” She asked.

“Forgot my stuff.” I quickly responded, making my way into the dressing room. My locker was right next to the door, and we didn’t have locks, so I didn’t spend anytime getting the locker open. I untied tied the apron and hung it us on the hooks next to the door. My clothes from today, my phone, and my car keys were all in one bag, so I just grabbed the entire thing, not bothering to look through it.

I was sprinting again, this time out of the building. Jimin and Yoongi were sitting in my car, Yoongi in the front seat and Jimin sitting right behind where I would be sitting. The driver’s side door was still wide open, from where I had left it about a minute ago. I smiled and waved at them as I walked up to the door, reaching in to pop the trunk open.

I grabbed my phone and keys, and threw the bag in the trunk. I quickly got back into the car after closing it and started the car. Yoongi smiled at me. “ _Where are we going?_ ” I asked him, pulling out of the parking lot. Yoongi told me to go right. It was basically silent for the entire ride. Yoongi had stolen the aux cord to my radio and started playing some kpop songs.

“ _My dad listens to K pop all the time_.” I told them. Jimin was singing along with the song with scary accuracy. I may speak Korean fluently, but sometimes the songs were difficult for me to learn and sing.

“ _Do you listen to K pop too_?” Yoongi asks while Jimin was jamming out in the back seat.

I shook my head. “I _listen to classical a lot. I listen to K pop whenever my dad is around_.” I responded, not looking at them, but I could see Jimin doing stupid stuff through the mirror. It may have looked stupid, but it was endearing and made me smile.

“ _I listen to classical a lot too_.” Yoongi says. “ _I listen to it when I’m composing music and songs._ ”

“ _You write music?_ ” I asked. He didn’t seem like the person who would compose music for a living, but I guess I could see it. Him listening to a classical piece by Beethoven while coming up with his own melodies in his head. I could imagine Jimin and I listening to what he wrote and praising him afterward with cuddles and affection. The idea in my head was domestic, and it was obviously something I wanted in the future.

For the rest of the ride, we made some small talk, and a majority of it was them telling me where to go. “ _It’s here_.” Jimin says, “ _On the left._ ” I pulled up and my eyes widened. They were staying at the finest hotel in the state. It was so expensive, that my family only got to stay here once, and that was about ten years ago, when we had first moved to this town.

“Holy shit.”

“I _know! It’s so cool! Hotels here are so much more fancy here in America._ ” Jimin responded, sounding excited. “ _We’ve been here for two days already. I’m gonna be sad when we leave.”_

‘So will I’ My inner voice said.

I parked the car. “ _Jimin, can you hand me my purse from back there?_ ” He did what I had asked, and we all got out of my car and entered the building. The hotel was tall, but their room was only about halfway up.

“ _Yoongi and I share a room._ ” Jimin told me as he opened the door. The room was large. There was a living room with a couch, sofa, and a huge flat screen T.V.. A small kitchen was located on one end, and on the other end, there was two doors, one for the bedroom and the other for the bathroom, I’m assuming.

“Wow.”

“ _I know._ ” Yoongi was a bit cocky with the response. “ _Come on, let’s go_.” He started a path to the door on the right, which was the bedroom. Unless we were going to the bathroom. Then that would be weird, but from what I could see, they were a weird group of people.

It did turn out to be the bedroom. The were not as weird as originally thought. The room only had one bed, which was actually large. This hotel room only had one room though. Did they share the bed? Jimin launched himself onto the bed, laughing. Yoongi was calm and all he did was sit on the edge of the bed. He patted the spot next to him, where he wanted me to sit.

I sat down, crossing my legs, and that was the start to an all night conversation.


	6. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life finally begins for the main character of this shitty story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God this chapter is short but I feel like this is where this should go. Everyone speaks Korean now so no more italics!!! I would also appreciate if someone could tell me if this story is actually worth continuing, that would be great.

~Four Years Later~

 

‘What time does your plane leave?’ 

 

“Tomorrow. Really fucking early.” I said. A laugh could be heard over the other end of the call. “It’s not funny. I’m not even gonna bother to go to sleep tonight because it’s so early.” I scowled, but I knew he couldn’t see that I was actually giving him a death glare. He was on speaker, letting me pack the rest of the stuff for the start of my new life tomorrow.

 

‘Well, just think about it. In two days, you’re gonna be here, and we’re gonna be roommates, and then you get to start the job that you’ve always wanted since you were three years old.’ In the grand scheme, everything happening in the next few days were going to make my life. 

 

Two months ago, I graduated Culinary school. Last month, I got hired to cook for some of the most famous K pop stars in South Korea, and in a week, I started my job. I would primaraly live with my best friend, Jeongwoo, but I would get to go on tour with different bands.

 

“Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

 

‘I know I’m right.’ He retorts with a cocky tone to his voice. ‘The only thing I’m worried about is Jimin and Yoon-’

 

“Stop talking.” I interupted. My black hair fell over my shoulders, framing my face, which has thinned out in the past few years. 

 

‘Dakota, you know that the chance of seeing them here is pretty great.’ Jeongwoo starts. ‘I just want you to know just incase you see them again.’

 

I never wanted to hear those names again. 

 

I didn’t respond to him. I only thought about the past and what had happened. After the first night together, we had exchanged numbers. They left to go back to South Korea two days after we met, but we were always talking to each other over the phone. When I went to South Korea, we tried to hang out as much as we could, but with me traveling all over the country and their work, we didn’t get to see each other much. 

 

We talked for a few months after that. However, right around January of the next year, our conversations became less, to the point where whenever I tried to call tham or message them, I never got a response.

 

I gave up in April, and it’s been almost three and a half years since I talked to them. I had given up on everything. Love and life. I didn’t get to go to college for almost two years after. I just didn’t care. A year after they stopped talking to me, I tried to commit suicide, convinced that I was too ugly and worthless for my soulmates to even talk to me.

 

My mom found me, bleeding out in the tub. 

 

I got help after that, and half a year later, I was enrolled in culinary school and living the life I had always wanted, minus my soulmates.

 

I hated the names Jimin and Yoongi after that. I hated them. So much, that I had dyed my hair back to my original black color and wore colored contacts that were black so I wouldn’t have a constant reminder of what happened and what could have been if I wasn’t me.

 

And now I was here, living my dream. I was an actual chef. I was the top of my class when it came to taste, but my presentation was a bit lacking, so I wasn’t going to get hired at a huge 5-star resturaunt. But K-pop stars didn’t care what their food looked like. They cared about the taste, and how filling it would be.

 

“I don’t care. If they try to talk to me, I won’t respond. I won’t even look at them.”  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

It wasn’t my first time riding a plane. I’ve been on them plenty of times, but this was my first time riding one by myself, and I was really nervous. The plane landed in the airport in Seoul.

 

Jeongwoo was honestly the bestest friend in the entire world. He was in the lobby of the airport, holding a massive sign with my name and hearts around it, just what I had done to him when he came to visit me in America last year.

 

“You’re amazing.” I told him, laughing and bringing him into a hug. He didn’t hesitate to hug me back even harder. He even went as far as picking me up and spinning me around in circles. My head was in his neck, preventing me from seeing the entire world spin in circle around us.

 

“Come one. Let’s get you home.”


	7. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dakota And Jeongwoo have officially (ish) settled in to his apartment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys! I'm so Sorry I haven't uploaded in awhile. I Had finals and I lowkey failed a class so I had to turn in a shit ton of work that I didn't do so that's what I've been doing. How have you been??

If you asked me, “What do you want to be and do when you grow up?”, Eight year old me would respond with a “I wanna cook food and cakes for my soulmate!” Now, the answer is basically the same, but instead of making food for my no good soulmates, I was doing it for other people.

 

“Oh my god, this is amazing, Dakota!” Jeongwoo exclaimed. 

 

After refusing to go to a fast food place ( I’m a five star chef. Fast food joints are actually garbage to me), Jeongwoo and I went home and decided that I was going to make breakfast with whatever was in his fridge.

 

Which, in all honesty, was nothing. There was some milk that I had to double check to make sure it wasn’t spoiled, some eggs, bread, and a few other seasonings. It was enough to make some sort of french toast, which I bet that Jeongwoo has never had before.

 

“I did the best with what I had.” I told him. “We’re gonna have to grocery shopping soon and get some more, not close to being expired, stuff.” He didn’t respond, looking down at his food in shame. “You have a five star chef living with you now. You best believe that you’re going to get the quality food.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“Great. Make a list of what you want and we’ll go shopping in the morning. You know, If I can get up.” I said. I already felt tired. The jet lag was bad when you moved to the other side of the planet, but this is what I chose to do, and I knew that I could easily get onto a proper sleep schedule. 

 

“You should probably go to sleep now.” He looked concerned, but I knew if I fell asleep now that It would take a longer time getting my sleep schedule fixed, so I shook my head.  
“I can’t. I just need to fix my sleep schedule quick.”

 

“Then do you want to go get coffee and then go shopping today?” He questioned, his mouth full of food.

 

“Jeongwoo!” I scolded. “Don’t speak with your mouth full of food!” He looked down in shame. “But sure, Let’s go today!” I exclaimed. “Let me finish my food though. I’m starving!”

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

After an almost successful shopping trip (I had freaked out about halfway through because I thought I had seen Jimin and Yoongi), We were back at home, unloading the groceries into the cabinets and refrigerator. “So how are the kids doing?” Jeongwoo had questioned, talking about my younger siblings.

 

“The twins graduated and I think Tyler and Lucas are going to get married soon. They’ve been together for almost three years now.” I told him.

 

“I’m going to be disappointed if I’m not apart of the wedding party.”

 

I smiled. “I know you’re going to. They all see you as an older brother.” That make a large smile cast over his face.

 

When we had first met each other, he was sure that I was his soulmate, my recently colored mint hair matching the color of his eyes. However, his eyes found mine and he didn’t feel that special spark. He had been disappointed, but there was many people in the world who dyed their a mint color. He had become my best friend after that day. Even when I came back to America and expected him to stop talking to me, he still held up his side of the conversation, unlike the two people I was meant to stay with for the rest of my life.

 

We visited him all of the time, and he once came to America and stayed with me at my parents house, where he became close with the rest of my family. He was basically an another adopted child in our family. Sophie looked up to him. The twins thought he was the coolest person in the entire world, and my parents loved him (Even to the point of trying to get us together, despite him having a soulmate out in the world somewhere. I think my dad just really wanted me with a Korean boy.)

 

When I told him that I got the job in South Korea, he told me that he just had to kick his roommate out, leaving an open spot for me in his small apartment that he had. He offered, and I took it right away.

 

And now, We’re in the small kitchen that I could barely prepare a bowl of cereal in, putting away the groceries that we had bought with our combined money. It was a long journey, but I’m glad I had taken this journey with him.

 

“Do you wanna Skype them?” I questioned him. 

 

His head shook. “I Skyped with Travis when you were on the plane. Sophie and Tyler were there as well.” Of course he had Skyped with them while I was asleep in the damned plane. “They already miss you.”

 

“I left yesterday!”

 

“That doesn’t stop them from missing their older sister.”

 

A small, remorseful smile fell onto my face. Sophia is going to be in the high school all by herself this year, the twins were off to college, and I was here. For the first time in forever, we were truly separated. My parents only had Sophia living with them now. They were basically alone now. 

 

“I miss them too. I could still be in America, living with them, and just thinking about this entire situation would make me miss them. It happened quite a bit as I was thinking about it in the months leading up to the move.” I told him. He nodded his head in understanding. Of course he would understood. He had his own family, but they lived in the same country. Same city. Basically neighbors. They weren’t halfway across the planet.

 

But It was okay. I chose this. I chose to move across the world. I chose to leave my family just so I could move to a country that the two biggest assholes in the entire planet Earth had resided. I did this so I could follow my dreams (And maybe the smallest part of me wanted to see them again, but no one was to know that).


	8. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dakota's first day on the job is almost upon us.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey dudes. I'm sorry I haven't posted in a bit. I'm a very busy high school student. Anyways, hope you had a good holiday season!!
> 
>  
> 
> P.S. This really sucks. I appreciate you reading this story.

In the week that followed the move, my sleep schedule had magically fixed itself (I find it much easier to correct such things when you have a native there to tell you when to wake up and when to go to sleep). I sometimes felt fatigued in the middle of the day, but that was fixed with a simple cup of coffee, which I would usually chug down.

In the week that followed, I was notified of my first job, which was going to be me cooking of a large K-Pop group while they were filming a music video. I would be staying with them for a week in the same hotel in the city over. I had a bag packed with all of my clothes that I would need, along with a smaller bag that was carrying all of my bath supplies and my brown colored contacts. 

With the colored contacts, It made my eyes appear a normal shade of brown that was per the norm for someone of my skin tone. However, if you looked close enough, you could see a ring of blonde in my left eye and a rose ring in my right eye. I hated it. The small reminder of Jimin and Yoongi.

“How am I going to get through this week without your amazing food?” Jeongwoo exclaimed in aspiration, bringing me out of my thoughts. “I’ve gotten used to it and I don’t think I can ever go back to plain instant black bean noodles!”

“Jeongwoo!” I basically shouted, grabbing my purse from where it was hanging next to the door. “I left a shit ton of leftovers in the fridge. As long as you don’t eat it all in one day, you should be fine for one week!”

The company I was working for was sending a car to come pick me up, and it was supposed to be here in less than ten minutes, and Jeongwoo was currently trying to get me to not go. I didn’t even have my shoes on yet because of my annoying best friend. He knew I was leaving last week, literally the day after I got here. He had no reason to be complaining and fighting now. So I told him just that.

“But that was before I got used to your delicious cooking. There is no going back after having a five star chef cook for you every meal of the day.” He almost sounds like he’s sobbing now.

“You do realize there will be times where I’m going for several months, right?” His eyes widened to the size of saucers.

“I’ll just fit myself into your luggage.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re actually acting like a two year old” I sighed out, walking over the door and sliding my slippers off and putting on my shoes. “Look. It’s a week. Stop being a pussy and fend for yourself. You’re twenty five years old. Act like it.” He sobered up almost immediately I stopped talking.

“You’re right.” He said, ashamed in his previous actions.

I smiled at him to ease his tension. “I’m always right.” I paused, and the smile on my face quickly turned devious, “Oppa.”

“YAH!” He exclaimed. “Don’t call me that! It’s weird!” He sounded disgusted, but I could tell it made him feel better, seeing as he’s been trying to get me to call him Oppa for years now.

My phone went off. I checked it, and it was a text from the driver, telling me that he was here to pick me up. “I’ve gotta get going now. Remember to eat three meals a day, there is leftovers, but I already told you that. No parties while I’m gone!” I told him while getting my bags together. 

“You forget who is older and actually owns this apartment.”

“You forget who’s the responsible one between the two of us.”

He nodded his head in a hesitant agreement. “You’re right, once again.”  
I waved at him as the door closed behind me. “Have a nice trip!” He shouted, right before the door closed. The neighbors probably hated us right now. They’ve probably hated us since I moved in last week. Jeongwoo and I were obnoxious and ridiculous when put together.

The elevator took me from the 8th floor to the first floor in less than a minute, and I saw a black car parked in front of the building. The driver was standing outside of his car, dressed in a black pinstripe suit with a white button up and a black tie.

He smiled at me and rushed over to help me with my bags, even though I only had two (and one of them was the size of my purse), he grabbed both and put them in the trunk of the car as I sat in the back seat. He took his place in the driver’s seat and we were off, on a ride to my first day on the job.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I didn’t actually start till tomorrow, apparently. The car pulled into the front of an expensive hotel, and I only had to pay for a small part of my stay here (They took twenty dollars out of my paycheck, but in the long run, twenty dollars was nothing compares to the thousands I would be making during a job). When I got my key and went up to my room, I realized that the twenty dollars were so worth the stay here.

There was a hot tub on the balcony, which looked like it could fit a large number of people. There was a kitchenette on one side, and large living room with a gigantic flat screen T.V.. There was a hallway that probably led to the room and the bathroom.

It wasn’t until I saw the people on the couch that I then realized that I would be sharing the room with people.

“Guys,” The guy with my suitcase had started, “ This is going to be your chef for the next week. She’s also taking the free room that we have.” One person looked like he was ready to say something, but the man interrupted. “And no, no one can room with her.” The guy looked disappointed. “Now go on and introduce yourselves.”

The people on the couch were the first ones to stand up. “Hello. My name is Sehun.” He had auburn hair and sharp eyes. It made it seem like he was staring into my soul and criticizing every little thing I did. He bowed at me, despite him probably being the older one. The next one was shorter than Sehun. 

“My name is Jongdae.” His black hair fell over his eyes, his cheekbones high on his face and his jawline sharp. It was the guy who looked disappointed after the man in the suit told them they couldn’t room with me, though it appeared to me that had was probably joking.

The next person didn’t even bother standing up to talk to me. “I’m Kyungsoo.” He was even smaller than Jongdae from what I could tell with large doe-like eyes. His fringe was left unstyled, falling to about halfway down his forehead. A taller, but leaner man was snuggled into his side, holding Kyungsoo’s hand. Their fingers were intertwined, and I noticed a small mark on the outside of his right hand. Kyungsoo had the same small emblem. 

‘Soulmates’, My mind thought bitterly.I couldn’t help think it, considering my nasty past with soul mates. They were cute together though. Kyungsoo introduced the guy as Jongin, said guy basically passed out on his shoulder.

One guy, Chanyeol, a tall giant with large ears and bright red hair, didn’t even bother looking at me when he said his name, eyes looking at the game he was playing on the T.V.. A smaller man with black hair was resting between his legs, back connect to Chanyeol’s chest. “My name is Baekhyun.” He said, almost distracted from the game he was playing with Chanyeol.

A guy who was already asleep on the floor was named Yixing, the only Chinese member in the group. A small guy was sitting in a chair, and he was introduced as Minseok, and I thought that he was maybe the youngest, if it wasn’t for jongdae calling him “Hyung”, and I reevaluated my life.

The last one was the leader, named Junmyeon, and he had a warm smile and happy eyes, but it appeared to be almost forced, like he was trying his best to hold himself together for the sake of the band.

‘Same” My brain said, ‘Keeping it together for the sake of my family and friends.’


	9. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dakota realizes the dark truth of the K Pop industry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEy my dudes! I thank thee for reading this! I had someone comment on the last chapter and it gave me hope for this story. Updates will be more frequent (Hopefully) I still have school so it still won't be as frequent, but it will be sooner.

After a quick decision to order some take out (Which I tried my best to get them not to, even going as far as offering to make them food tonight, without pay) I took my bags to my room. The room had a queen sized bed on the wall that had the door, and the wall on the opposite was basically just a giant window, overlooking the nightlife in the city.

I collapsed onto the bed, and the stress that had been filling my body to the brim for the entire day just left my body in an exhale of breath. I pulled my phone out of my pocket, opening it to see the background that Jeongwoo had set it to before I left this morning. It was a picture of us, him with crossed eyes and puffed out cheeks, and I just had my tongue stuck out of my mouth. A smile crossed over my face. 

I started to scroll through Instagram. Four years ago, it would have been Tumblr that I went to, but I’m an adult now, twenty-two years old. Tumblr is for angsty teenagers. 

Many pictures showed up. Selfies from former classmates. People showing off their overpriced dinners before eating them. Aesthetic posts from famous people that I follow. I stopped at a drawing, signed by Sophia. It was an art piece of the beach at Busan. The sun was setting into the water. It was truly beautiful, a masterpiece, like almost everything she drew. She could draw just about anything, given the time and supplies. Before I left, she had just started a huge one where she was drawing everyone in the family, including Tyler with Liam.

A knock on my door brought me out of my head. “Dinner’s here!” Someone called before I heard soft footsteps walk away from my door. Sighing, I stood up and pulled my long black hair into a low ponytail. The moment I opened the door, the smell of Chinese food hit me. It nauseated me, but at the same time, I was glad they decided to go with Chinese because I was honestly having a hard time.

“Woah. are you okay?” Some guy, I think it was Baekhyun, had asked me when he saw the look on my face.

“Yeah.” I smiled, “Just a bit tired.” The smile seemed to convince him, and he gave one of his own before grabbing my arm and dragging me behind him to the living room, where everyone was already dishing out plates upon plates of food.

Despite me having everything against fast food restaurants and take out places, Chinese food was a weakness in my life. It was a comfort food that I went to in every dilemma. I don’t know if meeting your employer (And the biggest boy band in South Korea) counted as a dilemma, but I guess it could be the excuse for when I wake up with a bloated stomach. A plate was handed to me, along with some chopsticks, and someone (pretty sure it was Jongdae), pushed me over to the couch, which is where I ended up taking a seat. Jongdae ended up taking the spot to my left and Yixing, who was awake now, was already sat on my right. He gave me a dimpled smile before taking a bite, focusing on his food.

“So why don’t you tell us about yourself?” Jongdae had asked me, his mouth full of food. “Where are you from? How come you’re so good at speaking Korean? Do you have-” 

“Jongdae.” Junmyeon had cut him off. “Let her eat first, and then ask her, one question at a time.” The leaderness was showing. I gave him a grateful look before digging into my sweet and sour chicken with the sticky rice. I was quick to eat my food, hungry from the lack of food in my stomach. The last time I had eaten was when I made breakfast for Jeongwoo and I this morning.

“So, how are you liking it in Korea?” Chanyeol asked me. Baekhyun was basically sitting on his lap. I finished my last bite of food before responding.

“It’s nice.”

“What is?” Someone, I couldn’t see who, questioned.

I smiled. “Everything. I haven’t been to Korea in over a year, and it seems like everything has changed.” I responded.

“You’ve been here before?” Junmyeon looked surprised. “Is that why you’re fluent in Korean?”

I shook my head. “I’ve been speaking Korean since I was a child. My dad is Korean.”

“Nuh-uh!” Jongdae exclaimed. “You don’t look a bit like it!”

My smile grew wider. “Yeah. My mom is American. My younger siblings are too. My dad is Korean, and I’m African American.” I told them. “ I’m adopted.” Everyone looked like they had a lightbulb go off in their heads. “My parents couldn’t have children of their own, so they adopted. There’s four of us.”

“Tell us about them! What do they look like?” It was Baekhyun’s turn to be overly excited about the littlest things.

I giggled, pulling my phone out of my pocket. Jongdae happened to the the picture of Jeongwoo and I when I opened it. “Is that your soulmate?” The smile that was on my face before quickly disappeared from the world in a split second.

“No.” I responded. “I don’t have a soulmate.” It was a lie that got easier to tell over the past years. It may have been a lie, but it couldn’t be any more truer. 

“Oh.” Yixing said. “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t have a soulmate either.” My heart instantly felt dead and heavy. With me, I actually had one. Two even. They might be dead to me. Though it made me feel guilty. Beautiful people like Yixing didn’t even get a chance to love, and I had two people who took it for granted and threw me away. They didn’t know how the world had spoiled them, giving them a second person who could love them.

“Let’s get off of this depressing topic.” Junmyeon, voice cutting through the sadness that had fallen over the room. “Dakota, you were going to show us your siblings?”

“Oh yeah!” I unlocked my phone and went to Facebook, looking for Sophia’s profile first. She didn’t have a lot of pictures of herself, a majority of them being art pieces. But I found one of Sophia, with a smile across her face, freckles dotting her skin, and her red and black hair was pulled up into a high ponytail. Seeing her smile, even through a picture, made whatever funk I had been in just disappear. “So this is Sophia. She’s fourteen, almost fifthteen.” My phone was passed in a circle around the room. Many of them commented on how pretty she was. “She’s really good at art too.” I said when the phone was back to me. I found a picture she had drawn of our parents on their wedding anniversary. “This is my parents. She drew that.” Everyone made a sound of astonishment at the masterpiece, that really nee3ded to be hung up in an art gallery.

“This is amazing! Can you do this?” Chanyeol asked me. I laughed at that.

“I’m good at drawing stick figures. I really only know how to cook.” A few people laughed at that. I had my phone, once again. I decided to just show them a picture of both Travis and Tyler, seeing as they were identical. “The one on the left is Tyler and the one on the right is Travis.” It went steadily around the room. It stopped at Jongdae. Since he was sat beside me, I saw the shock on his face. He pinched his fingers, zooming in on Travis. More specifically, his hand, where his mark is. It was a bit blurry, but you could make out the baby blue heart.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me!” He exclaimed, dropping the phone into his lap and lifting up his own right hand. I don’t know how I didn’t notice it before (probably because of the sleeves of his sweater covering his hands) but there, on his hand, was a matching baby blue heart.

“Oh!” I shouted, grabbing his hand to get a closer look. I rubbed at it, to see that if would rub off. It didn’t. “I have to call Travis!”

“No!” It wasn’t even Jongdae. It was Junmyeon denying me. “You can’t tell him!”

I was angry now. “What? Why not?”

“Because K- Pop stars aren’t allowed to have a soulmate if they’re not in the group.”

“What?”

“It’s another way for them to control us.” It was Chanyeol speaking now. “Baekhyun and I are soulmates, but we have another one. We aren’t even allowed to try and look for them.” My heart went out to them. They wanted to find their other piece to the puzzle.

“So I can’t tell my own brother that I met his own soulmate?”

“You could, but he would be unhappy. Jongdae would never be given permission to talk to him.” Junmyeon said.

I shook my head. “That can’t be it. What if they didn’t know? What if we don’t tell anyone?”

“They will always find out.”


	10. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dakota's life get flipped upside down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING REAL QUICK  
> This would have been out sooner but I suck at everything. Like school and managing my life. You see, I'm in choir, band, and AP classes and I had a test next week and like, four concerts in the next month. I want to die. Send help.
> 
> BUT ANYWAY  
> Happy Singles Awareness Day!   
> Or Valentine's day!  
> Which ever you have been celebrating today.
> 
> AND I TOTALLY LISTENED TO THE ENTIRE WINGS ALBUM WITH THE SPRING DAY EXTENSION ABOUT FOUR TIMES WHILE WRITING THIS.

That night, after we were done eating, I retreated back into my room. I was tempted to call Travis, knowing it would be daytime over where he lived, but I didn’t know if I could do that to him. Let him know that he had a soulmate, but he would never be able to see him, or even talk to him. I couldn’t let him deal with that. So to never tell him and for him to be happy, I would do it. As long as he was happy. I knew first hand that never seeing a soulmate could physically ruin your life.

It was almost 11 at night. I knew Jeongwoo would still be awake. ‘Hey’ I texted him, ‘Up for a skype call?’ I put my phone on the bed and got my pajamas real quick, which consisted of a black tank top and a pair of blue flannel pants (that I probably stole from Jeongwoo somewhere along the line). My phone rang the moment I flopped onto my bed. It (of course) was Jeongwoo, calling me over Skype. I answered, and his face was refreshing, giving me a happiness that I needed after the events of today. “Hey boo~” He said, drawing out the last word. I smiled.

“Hey Handsome.” I joked. While he was attractive, I honestly didn’t see him as anything more than an older brother, but that didn’t stop us from playing around.

“What time is it? Why are you still wearing your contacts this late at night?” He scolded me. Even though there was a joking tone in his voice, you could tell he was being serious.

“It’s a lot harder to get some alone time in a hotel with only two bathrooms!” I complained. “Seriously, there’s ten of us. Who thought giving us only two bathrooms was a good idea?” He laughed at me and my problems. “It’s not funny! I’m the only girl here!” 

It was around midnight before I got a bathroom to myself. At that time, everyone was asleep (except for some people doing some things that you could hear throughout the entire place, which I would rather like to ignore). I was at no risk to exposure at the current moment.

So I took my sweet time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Can I share a secret?” My drunken mind was foggy. I could barely comprehend what the others were talking about, but I ended up catching those few words from Junmyeon. After the long week we had, which involved everyone getting almost no sleep, whether it be them, filming the music video, or me, having to feed their hungry asses. Tonight was the last night I was here, and someone (pretty sure it was Baekhyun) suggested we drink to celebrate. A large amount of Soju consumption later, and we were sitting in a circle telling each other secrets. 

“My soulmate left me. I haven’t talked to him for almost six years now.” Junmyeon confessed. It seemed that everyone except me knew this already, but to say I was surprised, I couldn’t do that. Because he had that same look in his eye, the one that I have. The one where you have to pretend to be happy in order for everyone else to be okay. We were one in the same.

“What? I couldn’t hear you.” Someone said, and I was confused for a second too long before realizing that I had said it out loud.

“I didn’t say anything.” I responded, my brain, even though drunk, was still preventing me from talking about what had happened. I took another shot of the soju, adding another bottle into the empty pile. 

But apparently, that last shot was enough to tip my mind from drunk to wasted.

“I have two good for nothing soulmates!” I exclaimed. “I can’t ever forgive them for what they did to me!” tears were welling up in my eyes, and I instantly regretted saying it aloud.

“I thought you didn’t have a soulmate!”

I scoffed. “I don’t. Not anymore.” The filter I had before was completely gone at this point. “I met them four years ago, when I still lived in America. They were Korean, and the most beautiful people I ever had the pleasure of laying my eyes upon.” I told them. “A group of them came into the restaurant I worked at at the time. Only one of them spoke Korean, and my manager knew that I spoke the language, so she sent me over, and that’s how I met them”

“What happened after that?” Jongin had interrupted. He looked like a little kid listening to a bedtime story.

“We were fine- At least, I thought we were. I visited Korea shortly after meeting them and we tried to get together as much as we could, but their jobs prevented that sometimes. But I had my own stuff to do so it wasn’t that bad.” I said. “I went back to America, and they talked to me for a few months after that, but then they just stopped talking to me.” Jongin was in tears now, huddled into Kyungsoo side.

“So what was your trait?” Yixing questioned.

“Eye-hair.”

“So did they just so happen to dye their hair brown at the same time.” Yixing seemed like he was betrayed a little. Him and I had bonded over the week, with our shared fact of our soulmates not being a thing in our lives the starting ground for an excellent friendship. I knew there was no use in lying to them anymore.

“I wear contacts every day so I’m not reminded that I have soulmates that don’t want me.”

Jongin, even in tears, got excited like a puppy. “Can we see you without the contacts?” He was instantly scolded by Kyungsoo.

“It’s fine.” I told him. “I can go take them out.” I stood up quickly (which was a bad idea considering how much I had drank) and got dizzy almost immediately. 

“Here. Let me help.” Yixing hadn’t drank anything the entire night, leaving him to be the safest option at the current moment. So I let him help me. My contact case was in the bathroom, where I had left it on the first night. His right hand was on the small of my back, guiding me.

Now in the bathroom, I looked at myself in the mirror. I didn’t look too good, but I didn’t care. With Yixing watching me from the doorway, I took them out, the right one first, showing off the dusty pink color, and then the left, which had an almost lavender color. I was nervous. For the first time in years, I was going to be showing my eyes to people (that weren’t Jeongwoo or my family). Yixing helped me back to the living room area, and I needed it, because I refused to look up from my feet.

But I trusted these people, as odd as it sounds, despite knowing them for only a week. I didn’t trust them as much as Jeongwoo, but I could tell them this and know they would support and care for me. The living room fell silent as I walked in, the idle chatter that had filled the air just stopped as everyone looked at me in expectation.

“Dakota, you know you can trust us, right?” I almost laughed at the irony of it. Of course I knew that, but that didn’t stop me from being any less nervous. It reminded me of when I first saw the specialist, back when I was an awkward sixteen year old who had just found out that she actually had a soulmate. Except now, I’m twenty-two. I’ve gone through so much shit to get where I am today. In the six years since my eyes first changed color, I’ve only spent a year of it truly happy, and I was the happiest now. I had a family that loved and cared for me. I had Jeongwoo, who was honestly the bestest best friend a girl could ask for. I had nine new friends, who (despite being famous) were actually pretty chill. So I sucked it up and lifted my head up.

A chorus of gasps filled the once dead silent room. “Oh my god!” Jongdae, like always, got up in my face, trying to get a better look. “What are their names?” He asked, getting closer. He cut me off before I could even answer. “Junmyeon!” He shouted, startling me.

“What?”

“Come here!” Jongdae responded, looking away from me for a second to motion the leader over. “Look at the color! Who does it remind you of?” Junmyeon got as close as Jongdae had just moments ago.

“Holy shit.”

I was concerned. “What? What’s going on?”

“Are there names Jimin and Yoongi?” Junmyeon interrogated me, grabbing my arms to pull me even closer to him. I was so shocked that he knew their names, so I just let him. “Is that their names?”

“How did you know?”

“Oh God!” Jongin exclaimed like it was the most woeful thing he had heard in his lifetime.

“At least we know they’re not assholes.” Chanyeol muttered.

I was so confused at this point. How did they know their names? How were they not assholes? They left me all by myself, and I felt so bad about it that I literally tried to kill myself. If they weren’t assholes, then I had no clue what they were really. “Look, Dakota, I know you’re pretty out of it right now, but can you answer another question for me?” Junmyeon seemed to be sobering up as the seconds ticked by. “Did they ever tell you what their jobs were?” No. They hadn’t. They just told me that they were busy and travel a lot. I shook my head. “There might had been a reason for that.”

“Remember the first night, when we told you that K pop stars aren’t allowed to have soulmates outside of the band?” Baekhyun asked.

I nodded my head. ‘But what does that have to do with jimin and Yoongi?”

“They’re in an k pop group as well. One that is even more popular than us.” Chanyeol said bluntly. “They’re called BTS.”

“What?”

“Park Chanyeol!” Baekhyun shouted. “You didn’t need to say it like that!” He slapped him on the shoulder before returning to talk to me again, but I didn’t hear anything he had said after that. I was swimming in my own mind. I just couldn’t focus on anything besides my thoughts. ‘They were famous and I never knew?’ Was the first thing I thought. ‘Did they stop talking to me because they weren’t allowed to have soulmates outside of the group? Did their company force them to stop talking to me?’ I collapsed, falling onto the floor, sobbing. My hands came up and covered my face. I couldn’t focus on the person who had brought me into a hug. I couldn’t focus on how they let me cry into their shirt and soak their shirt with my tears.

“Shhhh… It’s okay.” I couldn’t place the voice with a face, but it was a comfort that I needed. ‘Is there actually a chance for me to be happy?’


	11. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter of Dakota's life, we get to see her relationship with Jeongwoo a little more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHHOOOO
> 
> I GOT THIS OUT
> 
> I DID IT.
> 
> I managed to passes the tests and I only have one more concert left!!
> 
> Hopefully I'll get a few more chapters out before I leave to go to Disney World.
> 
> ALSO  
> Thank you for reading and staying for this roller coaster of a book.

“Jeongwoo! I’m home!” I exclaimed, shutting the door behind me and toeing off my shoes. I heard a few crashing sounds, and then he came sliding around the corner, almost falling in the process. It was a split second later that I felt his body crash into my own, pulling me into a hug.

“Oh my Lord! I’m so glad that you’re back!” He basically shouted, despite me being right next to him. “I haven’t had a decent meal in a week!”

I scoffed. “Well, maybe if you hadn’t eaten all of the meals I made for you in a single day, you wouldn’t be complaining right now.” He pulled away, going to say something, but he suddenly didn’t. He looked at me for a while, speechless. His mouth was open, and it slightly reminded me of a fish gulping for air. It was a weird reaction, but I knew it was warranted. This morning, as I woke up with a nasty hangover and swollen eyes from crying, I skipped over the morning ritual of putting in my contacts. It had given me a small glimmer of hope. I decided I would give the whole ‘Soulmate’ thing another try, even though I knew I was probably never going to see them.

“Why don’t you have your contacts in?” He finally asked, getting over the curse of silence that had fallen over his body for a few moments.

“This is something I have to show you. It’s rather difficult to explain.” I told him. “Can I use your computer?” He nodded his head, and I pushed passed him so I could get to the living room, not really caring that I didn’t have my slippers on. His computer was charging, rested on the coffee table.

He took a seat on the couch, and I took the spot right next to him, laptop now on my lap. Jeongwoo rested his head on my shoulder, doing it to be close to me. He probably had some intimacy with drawls over this past week. He just watched as I turned on the computer, logged in, and opened the web browser. I thought about it for a second, wondering if I should just pull up a picture of them, or show Jeongwoo a music video. A music video would show him more, and honestly, I wanted to build up the tension that was growing in his body. 

I had spent the entire previous night just bingeing the music videos that BTS had made, so I knew which one to pick, and it was my favorite. Blood, Sweat, and Tears was released shortly after I had returned to America, and a few months before they had stopped all communication with me.

“Why are you showing me BTS? I already know them. Remember that time I tried to show you them to you but then you went onto one of those rants about how K pop sucks?”

“Jeongwoo?”

“Yes?”

“Shut the fuck up and watch. I promise I’ll explain everything soon.” I pressed play on the video, and it started with a scene of all of them in a museum. Yoongi was riding a bike, and he drove past Jimin on it and slapped him upside the head. It wasn’t hard enough to hurt. Seeing them interact with each other made my heart clench. The video continued, and both of us watched as the music started, with Jimin leading the dance and the song at the beginning. It went one, showing everyone do their own thing, along with the group dancing.

There was a scene, somewhat near the middle of the video, that showed Jimin and Yoongi kneeling and facing each other. Jimin was holding a red apple, while Yoongi was holding a blindfold. That was where I paused it.

“Yeah? The one guy is going to blindfold the other one. I’ve seen this video before, Dakota. Is this some weird new ki-”

“That’s Jimin and Yoongi.” I told Jeongwoo, not even letting him finish his sentence. 

“What?!”

I sighed. “That’s Jimin and Yoongi.”

His jaw dropped. He was speechless for a good thirty seconds before saying anything. “You’re soulmates are apart of the biggest boy band in South Korea and you never bothered to mention it?!” He shouted.

“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t even know. I just learned about it last night!” I responded.

“And what does that have to do with you not wearing your contacts? Just because they’re famous doesn’t excuse what they did to you. They left you, remember? They were the ones who stopped talking to you. They were the reason you tried to kill yourself!” If it had been any other circumstance, Jeongwoo would have been the voice of reason in this situation, but I knew things that Jeongwoo didn’t know yet.

“K pop idols aren’t allowed to heave soulmates if they’re outside of the group.” I told him. “It’s a way for the industries to control them even more. To prevent them from leaving.”

He was shocked. “Bu-but that didn’t work. Because didn’t one group have like, three members leave in the span of two years.” He asked.

“Yeah. I actually got to meet them. Their name is EXO.” I responded, and this time, his jaw dropped to the ground. “They’re the ones who told me about Jimin and Yoongi and the whole soulmate rule.”

“You met EXO on your first job?!” He basically shouted into my ear. “What’s with your luck? You meet EXO on your very first job and your soulmates are in the biggest K pop group in the world!”

“I guess I’m just cooler than you.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“What do you mean? You’re going to gone for how long?!”

“Three and half months.” I responded, taking a bite from the bowl of ice cream I had in my lap. “And I’m not about to make three and a half months worth of food for you to eat it all in one week. So I guess you’re just not going to have my food.” I took the last bite from the bowl and put in the sink to be dealt with later and hopped of the counter, where I was sitting. 

“You can’t do this to me!” He cried out, falling to his knees in front of me. “I’ll starve to death! You’ll come back to find my lifeless body, rotting away on the kitchen floor, which is where I’m going to die because I was trying to finally make myself some food.”

I sighed, resting on the counter. “Stop being a drama queen. I’m supposed to be the dramatic one in our friendship!” I exclaimed. I left him there, leaving to go to my bedroom, but he got up and followed me.

“But I don’t think you understand the magical healing properties of your food!”

“Of course I do!” I snapped back. “Why do you think I became a chef? Because I’m good at cooking!” I opened to door to my bedroom and hopped on my queen sized bed.

“I wish you were my soulmate so you could cook for me more.”

I snorted, resting my back against the wall. “I’m already your self proclaimed ‘platonic soulmate’.” I told him, laughing. Jeongwoo scoffed.

“I’d admit that it would be easier if you were my soulmate.” His tone was suddenly serious. “That way, I wouldn’t have to deal with the struggle of finding my soulmate.” The smile fell off my face at his words. He was twenty-five years old and he still hasn’t found his soulmate. His soulmate currently had blonde hair, according to the color of his eyes. Almost all the statistics claimed that if you hadn’t met your soulmate before the age of 26, the chances of meeting them decreased by at least fifty percent.

So I understood why he was scared.

“Jeongwoo.” I said, patting the bed next to me, motioning for him to come sit by me. “I believe that you’re going to meet your soulmate. I actually know you will. You’re too much of a good person to not have a soulmate in your life.”

He cuddled into me, resting his head on my lap. His eyes were closed. “Thank you, Dakota.” I ran my fingers through his black hair. Despite having the eye-hair trait, he never really had the money to dye his hair growing up, and that hadn’t changed when he got older.

“We should dye our hair together. Before I leave.”

“I don’t have the money.”

I laughed. “I just got paid a lot of money last week. I think I can afford being able to get our hair done.”  
“But-”

“No buts.” I interrupted. “Let me do something for you. Maybe if you have your hair dyed, it’ll be easier for you to find your soulmate.” I told him. “Let me help you with this. You’ve helped me so much already.”


	12. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> JUST READ THE CHAPTER OML I HATE MYSELF

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I CAN'T BELIEVE I DID THIS  
> GO AHEAD AND HATE ME FOREVER AND EVER
> 
> BTW, I'm like, already halfway done with Chapter 12 so you might be getting that soon.

Our trip resulted in Jeongwoo getting his hair colored a pastel blue, and me getting my hair dyed a cotton candy pink (we matched, looking like two different types of cotton candy). My hair contrasted with my light coffee colored skin, and Jeongwoo’s match the pale shade of his own skin.

And before I knew it, I was packing all my stuff away to get ready for my next job, where I would be going on a world tour. Deep down, I wished it was EXO again, but I wouldn’t know who the band was until I got there (Something about confidentiality). So I was walking into this completely blind. My mind has come up with a strange thought, thinking it could possibly be BTS, but I knew with how big they were, and with how new I was, that I wouldn’t be working with them anytime soon.

I was in my bedroom, with Jeongwoo sitting on my bed and the laptop propped up next to him, where I was using it to video chat with Yixing, who apparently didn’t have a single thing to do today.

“You’re going to be gone for three months?!” Yeongwoo exclaimed, reminding me of Jeongwoo when I first told him the news.

“Three and a half.” Jeongwoo corrected him, sounding depressed. “And she’s leaving in two days.” His shoulders drooped, almost like he was in a cartoon.

“Well it’s not us. We’re not going on another tour for about four months.” Yixing told me, and I sighed. It would be just a random band that I wouldn’t know and I would have to learn all of their names.

“Who’s going on tour anytime soon?” I asked him. He thought for about thirty seconds.

“There’s only like, five bands going on tour soon.” He responded. “And I can’t remember their names of the top of my head.”

“It’s probably a really big band if they’re going on a world tour.” Jeongwoo said. “She’s had some pretty good luck in meeting famous people.”

“Well it helps that I cook for famous people.” I retorted, giving Jeongwoo a look.

“Wait, It’s a world tour?” Yixing questioned.

“Yeah. I thought you would have known that considering I’m going to be gone for almost four months.” The look on Yixing’s face changed, making it almost look like he was surprised of shocked. “What?”

“Oh-” He snapped out of it. “It’s nothing.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Before I even knew it, the two days I had left with Jeongwoo passed in the blink of an eye.

“You better call me every night and tell me everything that happened.” Jeongwoo told me, sounding just like my mother when I had move to Korea. “Remember the take care of yourself!”

“I feel like I should be saying that to you.” I told him.

“Make sure you eat three meals and day and get eight hours of sleep-”

“Jeongwoo.”

“-and brush your teeth twice a day-”

“Jeongwoo” I said a little bit louder.

“-and don’t forget your glasses like you did last time!”

“Jeongwoo!” I finally shouted, and he stopped his rambling. “I can’t forget my glasses because they’re on my face. I’m cooking, so of course I’m going to eat three meals a day, and when have I ever gotten eight hours of sleep?” He looked embarrassed. “Geez, you’re acting like Mom.”

A large smile crossed over his face. “At least give me a hug before you leave.” He said. The car was already waiting for me outside, and Jeongwoo was trying to stall me, just like he had tried to do last time, but I hugged him anyway. My phone vibrated in my pocket just as I wrapped my arms around his waist. I knew it was another text from the driver.  
“I have to go.”

“I know.” He sounded like he was about to break out into tears. “I just don’t want you to leave me. I get lonely in this big apartment.”

“We should get a cat.” He nodded his head. I pulled away from his body, but not before planting a kiss on his cheek. “I love you.”

“Love you too.”

I smiled. “I’ll call you tonight. As soon as I get there!” I grabbed my bags, which consisted of my duffle bag filled with clothes and my carry on, which had all of my shower supplies in it.

“I’ll hold you to that.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Korea was the first place that this band was going to, and we were going to be here for the next week. It didn’t take too long to get from my place to the hotel we were going to be staying at (which was massive). 

“If you’ll just follow me, I’ll lead you to your room.” The driver said to me. He grabbed my bags before I could even think about getting them. In any normal situation, I would have complained, but I didn’t want to prolong the meeting with my ‘employers’. So I followed, without question or complaint.

In the elevator, he pressed a button that said ‘PH’ and then swiped a card next to the number pad. ‘Wow’ I thought. ‘They must have a lot of money to be able to afford the Penthouse Suite for a week. The elevator finally dinged, opening up to a hallway in the suite. “This is your key.” The driver told me, handing me the key he had just used. “Use it in the elevator after you press the button.”

“Is the chef here yet? Because I’m starving!” A voice called out.

“Why don’t you make something for yourself, you lazy fuck!” Another voice shouted back. I bursted out in giggles at that. The driver led me down the hallway, which opened up into the living room and an open kitchen. A group of them were sitting on the couch, facing away from me and more focused on the game they were playing on the TV. Two were in the kitchen, both of them tall. They were making something (or at least trying to). I walked over and laughed again. “You know if you want me to, I can make you something to eat. That’s what you guys are paying me for anyways.” The taller of the two laughed and turned around, his face becoming visible to me. His laugh went away as soon as he saw me, and I knew why. He recognized me, and I recognized him.

“Guys, this is-”

“Dakota?”

I whipped my body around, turning away from the tall, lanky man, and I faced someone who I thought I wouldn’t be seeing any time soon.

“Jimin?”

“Oh my God.” A man showed up behind Jimin, and I recognized the pink color of one of his eyes. It matched my hair. It was Yoongi. Yoongi and Jimin, right in front of me for the first time in four years.

Tears were beginning to well up in my eyes, but I wasn’t the only one. Jimin was close to sobbing when he ran towards me, pulling me into a tight hug. He cried into my shoulder. I couldn’t focus on anything besides his arms around me, his tears wetting the fabric of my shirt.

“I’m so sorry!” He cried out. “I’m so sorry for everything!”

I couldn’t say anything back. I was numb, like I was drunk. I knew what to do and what I wanted to say, but my brain and my body did other things. All I did was hug him back, my arms loosely wrapping around his waist as he continued to cry.


	13. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dakota has a very much needed talk...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M SOO SORRY FOR KIND OF LEAVING IT AT A CLIFF HANGER
> 
> But on the plus side, this chapter came out earlier than expected.

Jimin refused to let go of me, even when I went to go put my stuff in my room (which I got a room all to myself, just like last time). I think Yoongi was still in shock of the entire situation, not talking to anyone, even Jimin. He just sat next to us on the couch.

“So you’re telling me that that girl who we hired to cook for us is the soulmate that you stopped talking to four years ago?” Namjoon (who was the tall one in the kitchen) asked. Jimin nodded his head, which was rested on my shoulder, reminding me vaguely of Jeongwoo. “You know the company can’t find out about this, or they’ll fire her.”

“Does that mean she can stay?!” Jimin shouted, letting go of me for the first time since I arrived. “Yoongi! Did you hear that? She gets to stay with us! We get a second chance!” He latched onto the older who was still sitting on the couch.

“Have you even thought about what she wants?” Yoongi asked, speaking for the first time all night. “We stopped talking to her. We avoided her for four years. Maybe she doesn’t want to give us a second chance. You have to think about her first, Jimin!” HE was almost yelling at this point.

“Stop!” Everyone looked at me, because it was also my first time speaking since everything had happened. “Let me talk to them. By ourselves. There is things that they need to know about.” It didn’t actually take much to convince them to let me talk to the two alone.

“Just don’t murder them.  We need them for just a few more months.” Taehyung (I remembered his name) had joked as we were walking to Jimin and Yoongi’s shared room. I smiled at him to let him know that I appreciated him trying to lighten the mood.

The door closed behind me, and I was truly alone with them for the first time in years.

“So how bad did we fuck up?” Yoongi questioned, getting straight to the point. I crossed the room, sitting on the queen sized bed.

“You might wanna sit down. It’s a long story.” I told them, patting the bed. Jimin didn’t even hesitate to come sit next to me and rest his head on his shoulder, just like he had done minutes ago out on the couch, despite everything Yoongi had said. Yoongi, being the awkward person he is, just sat in the edge of the bed, farthest away from me. “I guess it all started when I was nine. I woke up on my ninth birthday, and nothing had changed, because my eyes were previously black. So when my eyes hadn’t changed color and nothing else had happened, I was just convinced that I didn’t have a soulmate.”

“Honestly same.” Jimin said. “I thought I didn’t have a soulmate until I met Yoongi while we were training, and even then, I thought I just had him until the stylist dyed his hair and only one of my eyes turned red.”

“It happened out of nowhere for me. It was some random day that I found out that I not only had one, but two soulmates. I didn’t understand it at first, so my mom actually had to take me to go see a specialist. I actually thought I was dying.” I told them, and Yoongi let out a small laugh at that. “After that, I was in love with the idea of soulmates. I dyed my hair the first time so it would be easier for you two to find me.”

“When we first saw you at the restaurant, we didn’t think anything of it. We’ve had some pretty crazy fans dye their hair lavender and try to claim to be out soulmates. We thought you were just another one of them, and you didn’t make it better when you started to speak Korean out of nowhere.” Yoongi had said, and it made a lot of sense about why they hadn’t looked me in the eye when we first met. “And then after it happened, you didn’t seem to know much about K pop, so we decided to not tell you. We thought that maybe we could keep you near us without the company finding out.”

“But they did. That’s why you stopped talking to me, right?”

Jimin was the one to respond this time. “They found out after a Skype call that we had with you. Apparently, the manager was standing outside the room and heard the entire thing. The next day, we were given brand new devices and accounts, and they had blocked you on it. We couldn’t unblock you ourself.” He was crying again, but it wasn’t as bad as it was earlier. “We tried to get back into contact with you, but they wouldn’t let us.”

“All we wanted to know was if you were okay.”

I sighed. Jimin sniffed. “I’m going to be honest with you. I took it the wrong way. I became depressed, thinking that if I wasn’t good enough to keep my soulmates, my own soulmates, then I wasn’t good enough for anyone.”

“But that’s not the ca-”

“Please let me continue. You need to understand what had happened after you two stopped talking to me.” Jimin nodded in understandment. “I actually, at one point, had convinced myself that I wasn’t good enough for living.” I pulled up the sleeves to my shirt, showing of the scars on my wrists. Jimin gasped, and Yoongi was too shocked to do anything besides look. “I wouldn’t be here today if my mom hadn’t found me bleeding out in our bathtub, high off the bottle of sleeping pills I had taken.”

Yoongi broke out of it and crawled over to me from his spot and grabbed both of my hands in his. He pulled them up and kissed the jagged scars on both of my wrists. “I’m so sorry.” He mumbled against the scar on my left wrist, which was the worst one. Jimin didn’t say anything, but he wrapped his arms tightly around my waist and buried his head into my neck, tickling my face with his hair.

“After that, I changed my life around. I went to culinary school and graduated within two years. I graduated four months ago and got hired almost immediately after that. I moved in with Jeongwoo. Life is pretty good now.” I told them.

“I’m glad it’s been good after that.” Jimin said. “I don’t know what I would have done if you died. And to think that you almost ended your life because of us.”

“I actually had convinced myself that I hated you after that happened.” Yoongi stiffened, but it was something they needed to hear. “I went as far as wearing contacts and dying my hair back to black.”

“What made you change your mind?” Yoongi asked. “Unless you still hate us. Then this makes this entire thing awkward and confusing.” He went to pull away from me, but I tightened the grip on his hands to prevent him from doing so.

“On my first job, I met a group named EXO. I cooked for them for a week while they were filming their most recent music video.” I responded. “It was about three weeks ago. On the first night, I found out that one of the members was my brother’s soulmate, and I when I mentioned telling him, they freaked out and told me about the Soulmate rule.”

“But that doesn’t really explain how you knew that’s why we stopped communicating with you.”

“You should let me finish.” I shot back , but I smiled to let him know that I was joking. “On my last night there, we all decided that it was a great idea to drink. I had about one shot too much of some soju and I ended up telling everyone. I even went as far as taking my contacts out and they guessed from the color of my eyes alone.”

“I guess we should thank them. Remind me later to send them a card.” Jimin joked.

Yoongi was the next one to talk, and he brought the serious tone from before back. “So have you forgiven us?”

I hesitated. I knew it wasn’t their fault for any of this, but there was a lingering fear of this happening again, so I told them just that. “I'm scared to forgive you guys so easily after what happened. I know it wasn’t your fault, but what if it happens again and I’ve become so attached?”

“I promise,” Jimin started. “We will find a way for you to stay.”


	14. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> BTS meets Jeongwoo (Kind of).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I DON'T HAVE ANY CLUE WHY I WROTE THIS  
> I JUST THOUGHT IT WAS FUNNY  
> HAVE FUN
> 
> THE NEXT CHAPTER WILL HOPEFULLY BE OUT SOON!!!

“You better believe that we’re keeping you after this!” Jeongguk exclaimed. “This is better than anything Jin hyung could make!” Said man made a offended sound at that. “Joonie hyung, we should hire her to work for us 24/7!” He joked with the leader.

I smiled from my place on the couch. Tonight I had mad an American dish. Hamburgers. It was something you could get anywhere, but when a professional chef (like me) made it, it had the capacity of being a very delicious meal.

“I never knew you were this good at cooking!” Jimin said.

“I told you that I was going to go to culinary school!”

“I still didn’t believe you were this good!” The praise gave me a warm fuzzy feeling in my chest, as if it was something that my body craved. With a flushed face, I took another bite from my own burger.

Everybody was startled when a phone started to ring, and I was embarrassed when everyone came to the realization that it was my phone that was ringing. I put my plate down on the coffee table and dug my phone out of my pocket ‘Jeonggie Poo’ the caller I.D. said.

“Shit!” I said in English before answering it.

“Oh thank God!” He shouted, and I pulled it away from my ear because of how loud he was being. “Are you okay? You’re not dead in a ditch somewhere?”

“Jeongwoo, if I was dead in a ditch, would I have answered my phone?”

“Then why didn’t you call me? I was so worried!”

He was trying to turn on the guilt, and it was working. “I’m so sorry Jeongwoo.” I said. “I was super busy. I had to work, like a normal person who works.”

“Don’t sass me, young lady!”

I scoffed. “You’re an old man. A perverted old man for letting me live with you.” I told him.

I heard him gasp. “Maybe I’ll just kick you out! I can live all by myself with a cat named Muffins that actually hates my guts!”

“That was oddly detailed.”

“I have a very detailed journal!”

And that was when Jimin bursted out into giggles, tears welling up in his eyes for the third time today, but this time in mirth. It was then that I realized that my volume on my phone was loud enough for everyone else to hear it.

“Dakota?” Jeongwoo questioned at my sudden silence.

“Sorry. I was talking to someone.” I told him a lie, not wanting him to know the others could hear him. I put my finger up to my lips, telling the rest of them to be silent as I put my best friend on speaker phone.

“So you know how we were talking about getting a cat?”

“No, I don’t remember talking about getting a cat. I remember telling you to get a cat so you wouldn’t be a loner while I’m gone. “Taehyung struggle to not laugh at that.

“Well ,whatever.” He said. “The thing is, I think we adopted a cat. There was one outside of the build and he looked homeless. He didn’t even have a collar, so I took him to the vet to get checked up-”

“Is his name Muffins?” I interrupted.

There was a pause. “... Maybe.” Taehyung could help himself at that, and Jimin followed right after. “What was that?”

“Nothing!” I covered quickly. “I think it was my employers laughing at some dumb shit.” That made Jimin laugh harder at that comment, his head falling to rest on Yoongi’s lap. His laugh sent flutters to my heart, as if butterflies were attacking it (and that has to be the corniest thing I have ever thought about).

“It must be really funny if they’re laughing loud enough for us to hear them.”

“Yeah.” It was getting hard for even me to hold back my giggles. I was wondering how long it would take for him to find out they were laughing at him. “So anyways, the cat?”

“He’s in perfect health!” He exclaimed. “He needed a few shots, so he got them, and then they told me to just release him back into the wild.” He sounded like they had offended him. “I couldn’t bring myself to do it, so now he’s living with us for the time being.”

“I can’t believe you actually got a cat. You can barely take care of yourself!” I told him. “I’m going to come back to find you dead and Muffins eating your corpse.” Hoseok finally lost it, rolling on the floor.

“That’s not true!”

I scoffed. “Remember when I was gone for a week and you literally almost starved yourself to death?” I said. “Geez, I don’t know how you lived before I moved in with you.”

“My old roommate took care of me. And before that, it was my parents.”

By the time I had hung up, Jeongwoo had said enough dumb shit to have even Yoongi letting out a few giggles. “So that’s your best friend?” Yoongi chuckled a bit as he asked.

“That’s my best friend.” I repeated it as the answer. “He’s about as blonde as his soulmate!” Taehyung was laughing so hard to the point he was sobbing into Jeongguk’s chest, who was laughing as well, but not as hard as his soulmate, or even my own soulmate.

Jimin was currently laying on top of both Yoongi and I, his high pitched laugh ringing louder than all the others.

It calmed down after that. Everyone was quiet, but we were all in a euphoric high. All of the adrenaline quickly went away though, and I grew extremely tired. “I’m sleepy.” I yawned out. “I’m going to turn it.” I lifted Jimin’s legs and feet from off of my lap and stood up. I looked over at the two men on the couch. Yoongi gave me a gummy smile.

“Good night, Dakota.”

I wanted to lean over and place a kiss on their foreheads, but I didn’t really know the boundaries yet. So I smiled at them and left to go to my room. 

My suitcase was carelessly thrown on the floor. I didn’t have enough energy to put any of it away, so I just got some pajamas out and changed into them. I put my phone on the charger before collapsing onto the bed, not even bothering to pull the covers over my body. Before my mind drifted off into the land of dreams, I thought about my soulmates.

I fell asleep with a smile on my face.


	15. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dakota meets the fans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M GOING TO DISNEY IN TWO DAYSSSS  
> GOODBYE COLD MICHIGAN  
> HELLO WARM FLORIDA
> 
>  
> 
> This is going to be the last chapter for about two and half weeks. I'm going to Florida for a week, and then I have SAT testing.

The next few days were busy. I woke up at five every morning to get a head start on breakfast. Jin usually woke up at five forty-five and woke everyone else up as well. By six, we were eating breakfast in different states of awakeness. Yoongi was always the last one out of bed, and it took both Jimin and I to convince him to get up. I wondered how they woke him up before I showed up here.

By seven, they were gone to practice their dancing, and I was left all by myself in the penthouse. I took this time to take a shower and got ready for the day. By eleven, I was starting on lunch, and by twelve-thirty, they were back and eating. They had an hour and a half to break, which they used to shower, and by two, we were all in a van heading towards the concert venue.

The concert started at seven , and they spent the four hours before getting their makeup and hair done, and practicing some more. I just sat around with a book in my hand. They wouldn’t be eating until after the concert, and I didn’t need to cook for that. We always went out for dinner afterwards. 

Right before they opened the doors, they (Jimin and Yoongi) led me to a front row seat that hadn’t sold. They said they performed better when I was watching them.

I waited as the theater filled up with thousands of people, a slight roar taking over the venue. It was the second to last concert here, before we packed everything up and left for China and Japan. I was on my phone, talking to my mom. After Japan, we were heading to America. Yoongi had given me a few extra tickets, so I ended up giving them to my family, seeing as the concert venue wasn’t too far from where they live.

The girl that ended up sitting next to me was wearing a ‘Suga’ sweater that had a ‘93’ on the back. I knew enough about the band to know that Suga was Yoongi’s stage name. It was kind of weird seeing people wear their merchandise with their names on it. This girl even had the same shade of pink hair as I did. She even went as far as wearing contacts the same color as Jimin and Yoongi’s hair. ‘So this is one of those crazy super fans they were talking about.’

“Wow!” The girl said when she looked at me for the first time. “There is more of you than I thought there was going to be?”

“What do you mean?”

“People pretending to be Suga and Jimin’s soulmate.” I almost laughed at that. This girl was funny, thinking that I was the one pretending to be their soulmate. She thought that she could pretend to be theirs, and I wanted to ruin her day.

“You know, I work in the industry.” I said after a minute of silence.

“Bullshit.”

“I’m not lying!” I told her, pulling out my employee badge. “I’m a chef and I cook for the bands on tour.” She snatched right out of my hand to inspect it, probably checking for authenticity. “There’s a lot of things that you learn when you spend time with them.”

“LIke what?” She asked bitterly.

“That Idols aren’t allowed to have soulmates if their not in the band.”

Her jaw dropped. “You-you’re just trying to scare me away from them!” She stuttered out. “Maybe this badge is faked!” She threw it back at me. She was really grasping at straws here.

I couldn’t help but laugh at her. “Whatever. Believe whatever you want to believe.” I picked up the badge that had fallen on the ground and pulled out my phone. I managed to get a quick picture of the girl without her noticing, and sent it to Jimin and Yoongi through our group chat. ‘Found one of the crazy fans 0.0’. It was seen by both of them seconds after I sent it.

‘OH NO!’ Jimin responded with a picture of him doing a pouty face. 

‘Cute’ I responded. ‘Stick that lip back in before I bite it.’ It was meant to be a funny thing. It was something my own parents had said to me when I was a pouty little kid.

‘He would like that’ It was Yoongi’s response. ‘Trust me. I know’ My face flushed a deep color that was barely visible on my dark skin. I knew that they had done some stuff without me there, and they had made me aware of this a few days after we got back together. I wasn’t mad or jealous. They were each other’s soulmates just as much as they were mine, but it was embaressing (on my part), to know what they did.

‘Too much information.’ I responded, attached with myself making a face, similar to the face I would make if I didn’t like something.

“Who are you texting?” The girl asked, looking over my shoulder to try and get a glimpse of my phone and my messages. I didn’t want her reading any of the conversations, so I turned my phone off.

“Does it matter to you?”

“Geez, I was just curious. You don’t have to be so rude about it!” This girl, who was rude to me not even minutes ago, was commenting about how I was the rude one. I let out a small laugh at the irony of it. I opened my phone again, taking a look at the background, which was now a picture of Jimin, Yoongi, and I. It opened back up to the chat, and I sent them a message asking for help. ‘She won’t stop creeping’.

‘I would come help but we’re practicing.’ Yoongi wrote back.

“Are those your soulmates?”

“Can you not creep over my shoulder?!” I exclaimed, slapping my phone down onto my lap to prevent her from reading more. “It’s really weird and rude, and if you do it again, I’ll get security!” She rolled her eyes at me.

“I can’t believe you! Can’t you tell who I am? I’m Suga and Jimin’s soulmate!” She shouted, but it was drowned out with the sound of the crowd. I almost wanted to bring Jimin and Yoongi out and kiss them in front of this girl, just so I could spite her and her petty dreams.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The concert ended, and I flashed the bodyguard my VIP card that they had given me. I rushed to where the dressing rooms were at. Yoongi and Jimin and their own room, and I bursted in, not even caring about knocking before entering. Jimin didn’t have a shirt on, and Yoongi was well on his way to being there as well. I didn’t care about their level of undress. I just walked over and grabbed Yoongi and pulled him into a hug. Jimin freaked out, running to the door and locking it.

“Dakota! You can’t just come in here and hug us. Do you want to get caught?” Jimin scolded me, but it went straight through my head.  
“Can you please just let me have this?” I asked. “Please be near me. I want you to be close to me.” I was basically at the point of begging them at his point, clutching onto the front of Yoongi’s shirt. Yoongi (who had gotten a lot better at physical contact with me), wrapped his thin arms around my shoulders.

“Are you okay? Was it that girl?” He asked. Jimin placed his hand at the top of my spine and ran his hand up and down my back. I nodded my head as the answer. “What did she say?”

“She kept saying I was a fake. She tried to pretend that she was your soulmate.” I muttered into his chest. I wasn’t quite sure if they could hear me. “She went as far as harassing me about it. I don’t think she even knew about the soulmate rule.”

“No one does.” Jimin responded. “Only idols and company managers know. They think that the fans will eat up the idea of being our soulmates, even if they aren’t. They use it to control us, so we won’t leave the band.”

“It’s stupid. I just want to be able to show you off to the world.”

“I know it’s not ideal, but at least we’re together. And neither one of us plan on letting you go any time soon. We fight before we let them take you away from us again.”


	16. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dakota realizes that she can be happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Highkey, this was almost the last chapter
> 
> BUT 
> 
> I wanted to do more in this story and not have to write a sequel. Not saying that there isn't going to be one. I just wanted to keep Dakota's story into one actual story.

That night, we were cuddled up on Jimin and Yoongi’s bed, watching a show on the laptop and eating Ice Cream. Jimin was in the middle, Yoongi was on his right, and I was on his left. We were all in pajamas, and if we really wanted to, we could all fall asleep as is. All of the makeup that was on our face during the night had been clean off, leaving our faces bare. My hair was washed from all the product holding it in it’s curls, and was now up in a messy bun. I was wearing a pair of Yoongi’s pants (which were entirely too big for me) and a sweatshirt that belonged to Jimin.

Said men were both shirtless and wearing pajama bottoms. We had the entire penthouse to ourselves, seeing as everyone else had gone out for dinner while we just decided to head back to the hotel. I had made some ramyeon for the three of us, and while I was in the shower, the two of them went to go get some chocolate chip ice cream.

I guess you could say that we were on a date. It was an “at home” date, but it was one nonetheless.

Netflix asked if we wanted to continue onto the next episode. “Do we?” Jimin asked, him being the one with the computer. “Or do we want to find something else to watch?”

“I’m kind of tired. “ I responded, yawning at the end of the sentence.

“Do you wanna go to bed?” Yoongi questioned. I nodded my head. “Do you want me to walk you back to your room? Or would you be fine heading back by yourself?”

My face flushed. “I don’t really want to go back to my room?” I stuttered out.

Both men were shocked. “Do you mean… spend the night with us?” Jimin questioned. It was innocent, but it still made my face turn a few shades darker in the blush. I answered his question by nodding my head. Jimin freaked out. He grabbed the three bowls, now empty, and rushed out of the room in order to take care of them. “I’ll be right back!” He shouted. I moved over and grabbed the laptop from where Jimin had carelessly thrown it, closed it, and placed it gently onto the nightstand. Yoongi scooted over and pulled me into a tight embrace.

“Thank you.” He whispered into my hair. We stayed like that for a second, until we were interrupted by Jimin coming back into the room. I didn’t get to turn before the smaller man was pressed up against me from behind, forcing me into the middle.

“Goodnight, Beautiful.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The next morning, I woke up surrounded in warmth. I was dazed and confused at first, but then I remembered everything about last night. In the middle of the night, I had rolled over onto my stomach, using Yoongi’s arm as a pillow, and Jimin was drapped over my back, just like a blanket. The actual blanket in this situation was tossed of the bed by one of us in our sleep. I wiggled my arm from underneath Jimin, trying my best not to wake him up, considering the two of them were still dead to the waking world.

I succeeded, reaching over Jimin to get my phone off of the charger. I pressed the home button, turning my phone on. The time is what startled me, which in turn woke the other two up. 

“What’s wrong, Babe?” Jimin muttered out, concern filling his sleepy voice.

“It’s almost eleven! We’re all late!” I shouted, struggling to get out of the bed.

“Dakota!” Yoongi said. I stopped freaking out and looked at him. “We don’t have practice today, which means you don’t have to work.” He laid back and closed his eyes. “Now please be quiet and come lay back down. It’s cold.”

My speeding heart calmed down quite a bit. “Geez, that would have been nice to know last night before we went to sleep.” I joked, laying back down between the two men. Jimin let out a giggle at my words.

“I’m sorry. We were all just so tired last night, and we were both so excited that you’re actually letting us get close to you. We just forgot.” I smiled as we cuddled back together. I faced Jimin, and he looked back at my face. He just stared, and I couldn’t help but look back.

“Can I kiss you?”

My eyes widened, and I gasped. But with me being as clumsy as I am, I ended up choking on my own breath. I coughed my lungs out with Yoongi rubbing and patting my back.

“My God, Jimin! You can’t just ask her something like that!” Yoongi scolded the younger man. “We found her barely a week ago!”

“I’m sorry.” He apologized. “I was just looking at her and I realized how beautiful she is. It just ended up slipping out before I could stop it.”

I let out one more cough as a blush tinted my dark skin. He thought I was pretty enough to kiss. My throat hurt from choking and coughing, but that didn’t stop me from voicing out what I wanted. “You know,” I started, “I wouldn’t mind if you kissed me.”

Yoongi’s hand stopped all movement on my back, and Jimin’s eyes widened. It was kind of funny to see their reactions, and I covered my mouth to prevent a giggle from coming out, though it didn’t work that well.

“Are you actually serious?”

I nodded. I honestly felt like I’ve been waiting my entire life, even though I hated them for a solid four years. I can’t even imagine what it was like for the two of them. “But I think that we might want to brush our teeth before we do any smooching here.” I told them. “I don’t know about you guys, but I have morning breath.”

“I don’t care.”

That was the only warning I got before a pair of soft lips were pressed up against mine. It was short, almost like a peck, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was Jimin’s lips against mine. I couldn’t think of a better way to have my first kiss.

My eyes opened as he pulled away, and I realized that they had closed during the kiss.

“Hey! How come you get to kiss her first?” Yoongi asked, but there was no malice in his words. I turned over to face him the man, and the moment he saw my face, he leaned in and claimed my lips as well.

“I think this is the best day of my life.” Jimin said as Yoongi and I pulled away from each other. A small smile took over as I flushed, watching the two men lean over me and give each other a kiss, before Yoongi suggested we sleep for a few more hours before the concert tonight.

As I lay down here, basking in the warmth and the love of these two men, I couldn’t help but be the happiest I had ever been. ‘I can do this.’ I thought. ‘I can be happy with them.’


	17. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dakota get a new job offer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I HAVE LESS THAN A MONTH TILL I'M A SENIOR!!

“We want to hire you.” Namjoon said to me, as I was cooking dinner for the group, on one of the few nights they actually had free.

“Haven’t you technically hired me already?” I asked the taller man, mixed the meat and the vegetables in the skillet.

“Yes, but we want to hire you full time now.” I turned around to look at him. “The tour is almost over, and you just did a fantastic job at feeding and taking care of us.” There was only two weeks left in the tour, and we were finishing off in Europe, before heading back home for one more show. “We’re offering you pay and housing. You’ll also get to stay with Yoongi and Jimin.” Honestly, I would do everything for free, if it meant that I got to stay with the two men forever.

“Okay.” I said without a second thought to it. “Now get out of my kitchen before you accidently set something on fire again!” I joked, shooing him away with a wooden spoon. “I don’t think management would be happy if they have to pay for another kitchen fire.”

“You set one microwave on fire and suddenly you can’t be trusted!” He exclaimed, leaving me alone on the kitchen. I was playing some American pop music while cooking, singing along and dancing to the beat of the music. My hair, which was mint green (again) was pulled away from my face in a low ponytail.

“You’re really good.”

I screamed, dropping the wooden spoon (that I had been using as a microphone) onto the ground, and when I went to pick it up, my fluffy socks slipped against the linoleum floor, and I fell. The laughter was high pitched, telling me instantly that it was Jimin.

“I actually hate you.” I told him, still laying on the ground as I listened to his giggles.

“I don’t believe you” He said after he stopped laughing. “For you see, you can’t hate me because you let me kiss you.” My face flushed in a blush, which seemed to happen a lot when I was with the two of them.

“I let you kiss me because I’m nice.” He laughed again as I was standing up. I threw to now contaminated spoon into the sink, to be washed at a later time, and I grabbed a new one from the drawer of random utensils. I stirred the food again, facing away from Jimin, trying to ignore him. He apparently didn’t like that though, because the next thing I knew, I was spun around and lifted onto the counter next to the stove. He was standing in between my legs, his hands on my hips. “Jimin, what are you doing?? I have to finish di-”

I was cut off by his lips pressing against mine. It was simple at first, making me forget about everything. The only thought on my mind was him. 

But eventually, it grew. His lips moved against mine in a fervent manner. He grabbed my sides, pulling me in so my chest was flush against his. My mouth opened in a gasp, and he took advantage of that, shoving his tongue in. I dropped the clean spoon, hearing it fall to the ground as I lifted my hands to run through his hair, pulling him closer. He let out a groan as I did that, and that excited me more than it should have.

“OH MY LORD I NEED TO BLEACH MY EYES!”

My eyes snapped open, and in a reflex, I shoved Jimin away from me. Taehyung was standing in the doorway, with his hands over his eyes. I hopped of the counter and ran over to the poor boy. “Oh my God, Tae. I’m so sorry!”

“Don’t apologize!” He shrieked out in a dramatic way. “The damage is already done!”

By now, everyone had gathered in the kitchen, startled by Taehyung’s screams of terror. “What happened?” Jin asked, holding his chest right where his heart was. “Is anyone hurt?”

“I caught Jimin and Dakota making out in the kitchen!” The man tattled before Jimin or I had a chance to respond.

Yoongi, who was standing the farthest away from the situation, glanced at the two of us, which made us feel quite guilty.

“Jin, do you think you can finish dinner?” Yoongi asked his elder. “I need to talk to Dakota and Jimin.” I gulped, not knowing what he wanted to say, and given the situation, it was probably a bad thing. We’ve all talked before, and we were all okay with kissing each other if the third one wasn’t there, so I knew it wasn’t about us kissing without him present.

Jin nodded in agreement, and Jimin and I followed Yoongi to our room (I still had my own room for appearances, but I slept with them most nights). We didn’t question, even when the door was closed behind us, reminding me slightly of the night I had first showed up.

“Are we in trouble?” Jimin asked.

The other male was silent for a few seconds more before he finally responded. “You two need to think before you do stuff like this.” He said in a calm, but quiet tone, which made me more scared than I should be. “What if it wasn’t Tae that saw you today? What if it was out manager? Dakota would be on the first plane to South Korea!” His voice raised as he spoke the words, and by the end, he was shouting, making Jimin and I both wince. He saw our faces, and calmed down again. “We lost her last time because we were stupid. I can’t lose her again. I don’t know about you, but my life has been perfect since she’s come back. I have the two of you, I get to do what I love the most with a group of my closest friends. We can’t let our stupidity ruin it.”

I looked down in shame. I couldn’t bring myself to look at the men. I knew everything he had said was correct, and we should have thought everything through before we did anything.

“I’m sorry.” I responded, looking at my feet, noticing the chipped paint on the nails. I wasn’t looking for long, because someone pulled my chin up so I could look at them. It was Jimin, who looked sad and angry at the same time.

“It wasn’t your fault. It was mine.” He said to me. “I was the one who kissed you first, but you just seem so ethereal, just standing there, doing what you love while singing and dancing. I got all domestic.” He told, a small smile breaking out on his face while he rested his hands on my cheeks. “You really have no clue what you do to us, Dakota, and the may honestly be the best for you.”

My cheeks became rosy under his palms. Just thinking about them wanting me made me want them even more. There was nothing stopping us, we were already in a relationship. I was the one who wanted to wait though. From a young age, I was told to wait till I had security in my life, and that was something I didn’t have yet. Sure, I had a pretty well paying job and a place to live and my two soulmates, but it wasn’t secure. I wasn’t sure if something would happen, causing me to be separated from the two of them again.

They understood that, and they never tried to pressure me into anything, and I was thankful for that. But today, it was more difficult to stay away from them.

“Can we cuddle?” I asked quietly, looking away from them. Neither of them responded, but Jimin grabbed my hand and pulled me over to the bed, and Yoongi followed. The two of them had taken a liking to sandwiching me between the two of them whenever we cuddled like this.

I can’t believe we only have a week left before you leave.” Jimin said into my hair, making it softer than it already was. “It really has been the best time for me too.”

“Namjoon said he would hire me to be your personal chef after we get back. He also said something about me moving in with you guys in the dorm.” I told them, not wanting them to be in despair. “Don’t worry. I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon.”

“You know, if he hires you, you could technically be an honorary member of the band.” Jimin jokes out, “and the soulmate rule only covers people who aren’t in the band.”

I laughed. “That has got to be the dumbest loophole ever!” I giggles out. “But I guess if it works, then it works.”


	18. Chapter 17 (HAh... Seventeen)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THINGS GO TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET MY FRIENDS.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Highkey, the small band mentioned in this was going to be History, but I guess it doesn't really work that well anymore. (Goodbye History. I actually enjoyed you)
> 
> Fun Fact: I write everything in my notebook before I write it on the computer, and I'm usually about three-four chapters ahead in my notebook. But now I'm only one chapter ahead. So I'm probably going to take a short break to get farther in the notebook.
> 
> Also!   
> Thank you guys so much for reading! Also, My birthday is on Wednesday (June 7). Finally going to be 17 years old!!

Everything was packed. My stuff was in bags, and I personally felt like my heart was going to fall out of my chest.

Namjoon had successfully hired me, with no complaints what so ever from the company, but before I could quit my current job and work for just them, I was booked for one more job in Japan, for just two weeks. Fourteen days. I could do that.

But it felt like my two soulmates couldn’t. They were already missing me, and I wasn’t even gone yet. We still had a plane ride back home, and they all offered to ride with me back to my apartment (probably just to see where I live for future reference).

Yoongi and Jimin were both crowding me, sitting on either side of me in the private waiting room we had before I flight took off. Jimin had his head resting in the crook of my neck, one hand holding mine, the other stretched across me, holding onto Yoongi’s bigger hand. Yoongi was staring into nothing, a blank look painting his face. He wasn’t holding my hand or anything. He was just embracing these last few hours we had together.

“Flight 151 heading to Seoul, South Korea.”

The voice over the intercom was the only thing that seemed to break the oldest out of the phase. He looked at the two of us before moving away. “You two can’t be touchy on the plane, so get it out of your system now.” He says, standing up. The two of us stood as well, Jimin not letting go of my hand quite yet. “I know it’s going to be hard these next few weeks, but we just have to get through this and then we’re going to be free.” He pulled me into one last hug, and I could already feel the tears building up in my eyes, which were currently brown because of security reasons.

“Please don’t cry, babe.” Jimin says, wrapping himself around Yoongi and I from behind me. “If you cry, then I’m going to end up crying, and then it’s just going to be one huge poly pity party.” He joked, in a sad attempt to lighten the dark mood. It worked for a few seconds though, but then reality came crashing back onto us.

“Guys, we need to leave now if we don’t want to miss the plane.”

It was Namjoon, being the leader and the responsible one in this situation. But he hadn’t met his soulmate yet. He doesn’t know what this feels like, to leave the people you’re destined to be with for the rest of your life.

I pulled away, rubbing at my eyes to get rid of all the traces of tears that had occurred. There was some smudging with my mascara, but that was about the limit of damage on my face.

“It’s going to be fine.” I told them, smiling. “It’s only two weeks. We’ve managed four years before.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I can’t believe you’re back home! I missed you and your cooking so much!” The blue-haired man shouted, appearing out of nowhere at three in the morning. I screamed, dropping my bags at the sudden appearance of my best friend. Our neighbors were going to complain when the day broke.

“Oh my Lord, Jeongwoo! You can’t just do that to me!” I responded back, clutching onto my chest right over my heart in my poor attempt to stop the heart attack that almost happened.

“Even the cat is excited to see you! Say hi to Muffins!” He pulled a black and white cat out from behind his back. “Hi Dakota! It’s so nice to finally meet you!” He raised the pitch in his voice and moved the cat around, like the cat was the one actually talking to me and not my weirdo of a friend.

“Can you stop being so loud? It’s three in the morning. Our neighbors are trying to sleep, something you should be doing because you have work in the morning!” I whisper shouted at him as I picked up my bags I had dropped and walked right past him. “And before you ask, you can wait till the morning for me to cook you food. I’m deadass tired and I plan on sleeping till at least noon. So leave me and my cooking talents alone!” I left him in the living room and went to my own room.

I wasn’t even dressed in my pajamas, but I dropped my bag and crawled into bed regardless. It was cold and stiff from lack of use, and it was difficult to be get comfortable enough to sleep. Now I was used to sleeping with my soulmates, used to the heat that they generated that made sleeping so much easier and better than it already was, and I missed it.

I opened my phone and stared at the background picture for a while. It was a picture that I had gotten when taehyung had stolen my phone. It had the three of us in it. Yoongi was resting up against the wall, his legs spread wide. I was resting in between them, with my back against his chest and my head rested slightly on his shoulder. Jimin was laying down, using both of our legs as pillows, and Yoongi’s coat as a blanket. Yoongi and I had our left hands shuffled through his hair. We were all sleeping, look of content on all of our faces.

It was peaceful to look at and remember.

It was looking at this picture that calmed my mind and brought me to sleep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

To say that Jeongwoo wasn’t happy was the understatement of the year. I had told him about the new job working for BTS. “So I basically have to find a new roommate who can cook and can hold basic conversation with me in less that two weeks?” He shouted, upset with the news.

“To be fair,” I responded sheepishly, “At least I told you now and and not right before I leave.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “ And it’s not like it’s going to be that hard to find a roommate. A ton of people want to live in Seoul. I wasn’t all that surprised when I couldn’t find a place before you offered it to me.” I told him. “It was a blessing that your previous roommate ditched you.”

“And now you’re ditching me!” He exclaimed. “You’re a terrible best friend! We only lived together for a total of a month! You were always gone because of your job!”

“Look on the bright side! Your new roommate is probably not going to have a job like mine and is actually going to be here to make sure you have enough to eat and enough social interaction so you can survive.”

He pouted again, but I knew that I was right, and so did he. I knew it killed him to not have contact and interaction with a human, so whenever I was gone, he was miserable. I think it got better when he got the cat (but to be real honest, I think Muffins was just driving Jeongwoo closer to insanity). I cuddled up to the taller man. “Come on. You know you can’t stay angry at me forever.” I could see him bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from smiling, but it barely worked. I could see right through him. He was my best friend after all. “And who knows? Maybe your new roommate could be your soulmate.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`~~

 

“I hope you know that I’m going to have a lot of free time, so you can expect me to come over and hang out a lot.” I told Jeongwoo, over the phone. “You might want to warn your new roommate about me.”

“I will.” He responded. “She’s going to be here soon.”

I was sitting in an airport in Japan, waiting for my flight back to South Korea to board. The last job wasn’t too hard. It was only a week of cooking lunch for a small band , who just kept their distance the entire time I was there.

When my flight lands back home, Jimin and Yoongi were going to be picking me up at the airport. They then would take me back to Jeongwoo’s apartment, to pick up all of my things, and then we would head to the dorm, where I would be staying at for the time being.

“Oh! Dakota! She’s here!” Jeongwoo exclaimed. “I can’t wait to see her! I’ll be right back!” I could hear him walk away and open the door.

While he was away greeting his new roommate, a news board on the wall next to me blasted out with breaking news. While the reporter was speaking Japanese, there was subtitles in English, playing along the bottom of the screen.

Shock filled my body as I read to report. ‘BTS’ Jimin and Yoongi leave band and sue BigHit.’

“Oh my Lord.”

It was Jeongwoo, basically screaming from what I could hear. But it never really registered in my mind. My phone fell out of my hand and hit the ground.


	19. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dakota is finally in peace (for the most part)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH WOW I'M bAckKK!!   
> Sorry I was gone for so long. I'm actually trying this year with school, and I can't really find the time to write. But I just started my Creative writing class, and my teacher is letting me expand more into this, so bless his soul.
> 
> Anyway, onto the chapter!!!

“What the Hell were you two thinking?!” I yelled at my two soulmates shortly after I got off the plane in Seoul. “You two are so fucking stupid! Leaving the band? Suing BigHit? What are you going to do now?” I was drawing a bunch of unnecessary attention to us, but I was so pissed off that I could care less.

Both looked extremely guilty. “We had no other choice. They found out about you again, and we weren’t going to let them take you away from us.” Jimin responded, looking at his feet. Yoongi was holding his hand, comforting the smaller man. “We love you Dakota. We would do anything to be with you. Even if it includes leaving our jobs and suing people.”

My anger quickly turned into sadness and love. I dropped everything that I held in my hands and pulled the pair into a hug. It wasn’t the most ideal hug, but it was still perfect to me. “I’m sorry I yelled. I wasn’t trying to be rude.” I told them. “I’m just upset you two gave up your dream just to be with me. I’m not that important.”

Yoongi pulled away, let go of Jimin’s hand, and placed both of his hands on my face, squishing my cheeks a little. “I don’t ever want to hear you say that again.” He demanded. “You mean the world to us. Like Jimin said, we would do anything to stay with you.”

My face blushed (something it likes to do when I’m with my soulmates). I looked down in embarrassment. “Look. None of this matters anymore. Let’s just go home.” Jimin says, grabbing my bags before I could even think over what he had just said. I just grabbed onto Yoongi’s t-shirt, following a step behind him.

We reached a car (one that I recognized as Yoongi’s), but not before collecting a small crowd. I looked down as cameras flashed and people asked questions. Because I was facing my feet, I didn’t notice that Yoongi had stopped in front of me, and I crashed into his thin body. I started to apologize, but he grabbed my hand before I could, intertwining our fingers. Any words that I was speaking fell out of my mouth at the action. I wanted to tell him to stop, not wanting either of them to get in trouble. 

“Do you want to know why we left?” Yoongi shouted out into the crowd. Their response was one of approval. He made eye contact with me and maintained it as he continued to speak. “This girl right here is our soulmate.” And audible gasp was heard. “We found her almost five years ago. And you want to know what BigHit did? They took her away from us. They prevented us from talking and seeing her.” There was muttering in the crowd. He finally broke eye contact and looked out. “We almost lost her then. But four months ago, we found her again, and they almost did the same thing. So we left.” At this point, jimin had walked over and stood on the other side of me, grabbing my free hand. “And, BigHit, if you’re bothering to watch this right now,” He looked directly into a camera in the front, “We’ll come back if you get rid of the stupid soulmate rule. We’ll rejoin the band, but not without Dakota.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Dakota! You won’t believe it!” Jeongwoo shouted as I walked through the door. Yoongi and Jimin followed behind me, ready to help me move the rest of my stuff into the car. Jeongwoo didn’t see them at first, causing him to just run up and squeeze me into one of his hugs. “ My new roommate is…” He drawled off, noticing them behind us from over my shoulder.

“You’re new roommate is what?” I asked, shaking my hand in front of his face. “Dude, you’re looking at my soulmates like they’re yours. Snap out of it.” He broke out of the trance and looked at me again.

“Oh yeah.” He says. “Just follow me. I’m pretty sure it’ll explain itself.” He turned around, and the three of us followed in anticipation of what it could be. “Hannah, come here!” A girl walked out of the room which used to be mine. Her long blonde hair was pulled into a messy bun on top of her head, her blue eyes hidden behind a pair of glasses. She was tall, around 5’7, and really skinny. It took me all of two seconds to make the connection.

“Jeongwoo! Oh my Lord!” I shouted, hitting his arm repeatedly. “It’s your soulmate! You finally found your soulmate!” A large smile broke on both of our faces. The girl (Hannah) just stood there awkwardly. She was wearing colorful leggings and a large black shirt, which made her look more out of place.

“Uhhhh.. Korean is very.. Hard.” She said very slowly, her native accent very obvious. She didn’t look confident in her skills.

“Do you speak English?” I asked her. It took a second, but she shook her head in response. “Well, that ruined my only idea.”

“Don’t worry Dakota! I will spend all the time in the world with her to teach her Korean!” Jeongwoo exclaimed, jumping up and down in excitement. I laughed at him, knowing that he would actually do what he said he was going to do.

“Well, we’re just going to grab Dakota’s stuff and get going. We don’t wanna intrude for too long.” Yoongi says, grabbing one of my bags that was against the wall. “Kota, we got this. You say your goodbyes or whatever.” I gave him a smile of appreciation, knowing that Jeongwoo is going to blow all of this out of proportion and spend a good twenty minutes on it, probably with some tears shed.

Hannah sensed that it was about to get deep, so she quickly said, “It was nice to meet you,” and left back into her room.

“I’m going to miss you!” Jeongwoo shouts, throwing himself at me to hug me. 

This was going to take forever.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

I decided to sit in the back seat while Jimin and Yoongi sat up front. “Welll…” Jimin starts, turning to look at me. “That was very emotional.” He finishes off with a smile towards my direction. 

“Jeongwoo’s just a very emotional person.”

“Don’t pull that bullshit. I saw you too. You looked like you were ready to cry too.” Yoongi says, but not looking my way because he was driving.

Since the apartment that Yoongi and Jimin had rented was only a five minute drive, it didn’t take long to get there from Jeongwoo’s. However, it was already late, the sun threatening to end the day, and with everything that had happened, I didn’t really want to spend the next hour moving my stuff from the car to the apartment.

“I think we should just leave Dakota’s stuff in here over night and deal with it the morning. We’ve all had a long day.” Jimin says, and it kinda freaks me out how synced we are.

“I need to get pajamas and shower stuff though.” I told him the flaw in the plan.  
It was Yoongi who spoke this time. “You can just borrow our clothes and shower supplies. It’s not like it’s that big of a deal. You already have a lot of our clothes. What’s the problem with taking more?” He laughs a bit at his own words. “And as long as you don’t care about using our shower supplies, we don’t either.”

I obviously didn’t really care about anything when it came to the two of them, so that night, I was cuddled up with the both of them, freshly showered. The smell that surrounded me made me feel safe, and for the first time in years, I fell asleep without any problems.


	20. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marching band season is almost over, so I should have more time to write more soon! I can't wait until I can provide more chapters.

That next morning, I woke up alone. The bed was cold on both sides, where the usual warmth of Jimin and Yoongi where at. It was said coldness that woke me up. I wasn’t really concerned. It was probably early afternoon already. They had things to do that didn’t involve sleeping in.

The next thing that processed in my head was the smell of bacon and pancakes. Someone was cooking, and it actually smelt good.

It made me curious.

I threw the large blanket off, rolled out from the middle of the king sized mattress, and almost fell in an entanglement of limbs and sheets.

As I exited the room into the hallway, I could clearly hear Jimin singing from the kitchen, which I couldn’t hear before through the door. The hallway opened into the kitchen, and now I could see him, facing towards the stove, and it looked like he was actually cooking. That fact alone surprised me. Jimin always complained about having to cook and everything else involved. I was expecting Yoongi more than I was Jimin.

I quietly creeped up behind him, planning on surprising him. As I got closer, he started to move his body in small movements, like he was doing a mini dance routine. From my position, I could see him start to use the spatula as a microphone. It was extremely cute to see, making my heart flutter, like the two of them usually did.

I wrapped my arms around his waist, feeling him jump in my embrace, but he recognized the body pressed up against him. I pressed my face in between his shoulder blades, placing a kiss there before muttering, “I could get used to this.”

He chuckled. “Not with me cooking. I’m only watching it to make sure it doesn’t burn while Yoongi goes and gets drinks.” His words made me laugh.

“I knew you weren’t actually cooking!” I exclaimed, letting go of Jimin. He took the opportunity to turn around and see me for the first time today. Our eyes met, and the little ache that I felt every single time I looked them in the eye appeared in my chest.

He smiled.  
“Well it appears that sleeping beauty has awoken.” I jumped in shock, as did Jimin, and we both turned to find Yoongi standing there, holding a tray of coffee. “I leave for five minutes and you’ve already neglected your duties. Jimin looked guilty immediately, turning back to the stove to mess with the food there.

“I’m sorry babe. I distracted him.” I told the older man, taking the blame for Jimin’s mistake. Yoongi walked over after putting the tray down, and wrapped me up in a hug that I gladly accepted.

“Well, if it was you, then I guess I can’t be mad about it.” I smiled up at him before pecking his lips real quick.

“Hey! I didn’t get a kiss earlier!” Jimin complained, and I laughed.

“I’ll give you a kiss if you finish breakfast, Jiminie!” I blew a raspberry at him.

“Who knew Dakota could be so mean?” Yoongi exclaimed, letting go of me and heading towards the other male. “You and I both know that Jimin is a small ball of fluff and sunshine and deserves all the love we can give!” He pulled Jimin into him, and the smaller one looked like he was agreeing. Right up until Yoongi gave him a sloppy kiss on his cheek, to which he let out a sound in protest. “Even if he a butthead that leaves us to do all the cooking!”

“”Yahh! I thought you two loved me!”

“We do, but you have to learn how to help around when it comes to cooking.” Yoongi shouts, continuing to give Jimin sloppy kisses. Bubbly laughter came out from the both of them, making my heart flutter more than it already was.

I couldn’t wait to spend the rest of my life with them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The next few days were busy with unpacking everything, and it wasn’t even a majority of my stuff. Jimin and Yoongi had to move their stuff out of the dorm. I didn’t go with them to collect their things, but by the way they acted when they returned, I don’t think it went too well. I made them each their favorite meals, and when we were all done eating, we cuddled on the couch and watched a movie, until we fell asleep in each other’s arms.  
“We’re finally done! No more unpacking things!” I exclaimed, falling back onto the couch dramatically. Jimin laughed at me, deciding that it would be a great idea to fall on top of me. “Agh! Jimin! Get off of me!” I shouted. Jimin continues to giggle as he moved on me.

“Come on Dakota! You know you love me!”

He was right. I loved the both of them so much. But right now, I couldn’t let him see that. I had to make it seem like I was angrier than I actually was, just so I could get the older man off of me. “I don’t know Jimin. It’s hard to love you from down here, underneath you.” I joked, sounding more fond than upset.

After I spoke, he flipped over, straddling my lap so he could look me in the eye.

“Why is it that everytime I walk into a room, you two are in some sort of compromising position?” Yoongi, whose apparent favorite pass time is scaring the ever-living daylights out of Jimin and I, said from the doorway of the kitchen. Jimin jumped straight off of me, falling on the floor. I couldn’t help but to burst out into laughter.

“Why Yoongi, Jealous much?” I joked in between giggles, no malice behind my words.

Yoongi showed off his gummy smile.”Nah. I could never be jealous of you two being together.” He says, walking over to help Jimin off of the floor. “If anything, seeing the two of you together is kinda hot.”

His statement made me flush.

“You know there is no rush,” The oldest started, “But whenever you’re ready, we are too.” I looked down, trying to avoid eye contact with the two men. It wasn’t like I was ignoring them and their needs. But with everything going on in the past few weeks, I had totally forgotten that we were officially living together now. There was no one stopping us from being together, in public and in private.

Jimin’s smaller hand lightly tilted my head up so I could face them. “We weren’t trying to embarrass you, baby. We just want to let you know that we’re ready when you are.” He moved his hand so he was cradling the side of my face, and I closed my eyes, leaning into his embrace.

“It’s not that I’m not ready.” I muttered. “We’ve just been so busy lately, I haven’t really thought about it.

“We’ll, we’ve talked about it, and Jimin and I definitely want to make your first time special. SO, what do you say about going on a date with us tonight so we can make it absolutely perfect?”

The way he was asking me made it feel like a proposal, even though I knew it wasn’t.

“I mean, I don’t kiss on the first date.” I responded with a smile on my face. Bot men laughed. “But yes, I’ll go out with you two. It would make me the happiest girl on the entire planet to go out with you tonight.”


	21. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dakota gets ready for her first date.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay guys. Thank you so much for reading! This is the last chapter of 'The Unfortunate Life of Dakota Kim'. However, the next installment will be out soon!

I took Yoongi’s car, filled with a majority of my formal wear, shoes, and my makeup, while I made the short drive from my place to Jeongwoo and Hannah’s. I had called him a few minutes ago to let him know I was coming over for help getting ready for my date tonight. Despite him being straight and having Hannah as a soulmate, he was actually still my gay best friend. Hannah had said she wanted to do my hair, but I was definitely my own hair and makeup. I just didn’t trust anyone with my face.

“Dakota! It’s been forever since I’ve seen you!” Jeongwoo shouts, flinging himself at me. I indulged him by hugging him back, but I was quick to point out the flaw in his statement. 

“It hasn’t even been a week, Jeongwoo.” I told the older man. I could see Hannah from where I was, and she was giving me an apologetic look.

“He’s been complaining for the past week. I’ve barely gotten a break. Apparently my cooking isn’t good enough for him.” Hannah tells me, and it was obvious that she had gotten better at the korean language in the week that she was here.

I slapped Jeongwoo’s shoulder. “You do realize that I’m not going to be here forever! I’m not going to cook for you every single day!” I scolded him. “So you either learn how to cook yourself or eat Hannah’s food!” I raised my voice as I continued to smack him.

“What is this?! I’m being abused!”

“I’m just smacking some sense into you!”

Hannah interrupted us. “Alright, stop it. I may support the reason why you’re beating him but I can’t support you hurting my soulmate.” She says and she pulls Jeongwoo away. I laughed. “Jeongwoo, go on up. I’ll help Dakota with her things.” The blue haired man grumbled about being abused and abandoned, but did what he was told anyway. “Sorry, he’s been a bit down since you left.”

“That’s to be expected. He’s always been the emotional one out of the two of us.” I told her. “Has he told you how him and I met?” I asked, grabbing my makeup bag while Hannah grabbed the duffle bag of clothes.

 

“Nope.”

“Almost five years ago,” I started as we walked back up to the apartment, “My Parents tool my family and I to South Korea so we could visit our grandparents here, and on day, we went to the market they have here in Seoul. At the time I had mint green hair.” She laughed, probably guessing in her head what had happened, seeing she had the same hair color at the same time. “He ran over to me thinking that I was his soulmate, and him being the overly dramatic person he is, he started crying, not even bothering to look me in the eye. I think he cried even harder when he found out that I wasn’t actually his soulmate.”

“That sounds like him.” She laughs.

“And the thing is, I had already found Jimin and Yoongi at that point, so I was really confused on why this random stranger had run up to me crying.”

“You’ve known your soulmates for almost five years and you’ve just moved in with them?” I winced at her question.

“A few things happened in those years. I didn’t even more to Korea till about six months ago, when I moved in with Jeongwoo.”

“May I ask what happened?”

I didn’t want to tell the story and have the memories connected to it ruin my date with the loves of my life tonight. “You can ask Jeongwoo about it later. I don’t really wanna talk about it right now.” She didn’t push the topic any further, as we rode the elevator up in silence.

The moment we walked into the apartment, Hannah started curling my hair, while I pulled out all my makeup and got it organized. Seeing as my hair was textured and a bit damaged from dying it all the time, it took a bit longer to curl it, almost two hours, and a large amount of hairspray. While she was curling, we got to know each other well. I figured out she had come from Germany to South Korea for college. During her time in Germany, she had a hard time learning Korean, because she had no one to talk to in the language, but the moment she arrived in Korea, it became ten times easier to speak.

After she was done curling my hair, she went out to go make dinner for herself and Jeongwoo, and left me alone to do my makeup. I did my makeup every single day in high school, so by my senior year, I was pretty good at it. The five years after high school, however, I didn’t have to energy to do my makeup every single time I had to leave the house, but I like to think that I’m still good at it.

“Dakota, would you like anything to eat before you leave?” Jeongwoo asked, as I was finishing off my lipstick, which was the last thing I needed to do.

“Nah. I’m about to start trying on clothes. Can I just get a glass of water?” He nodded and left, and I stood up while stripping out of Jimin’s sweatpants and one of my own T-shirts. The first dress I pulled out was a black dress, with long sleeves made with lace. It was tightened at my waist, and then flowed out to my knees, shifting gently into a dark grey. While it was a beautiful dress, I felt like it was too fancy for a first date. I tried it on anyway.

I walked out of the bathroom, into the living room. Hannah was sitting on the couch, eating a bowl of soup, and Jeongwoo was in the kitchen, getting the glass of water for me. Both of them saw me, at the same time, and both reactions were hilarious. Hannah screamed, while Jeongwoo’s jaw basically dropped to the floor. “Man, your soulmates are some lucky guys!” Hannah says, and I laughed.

“So I’m assuming that you guys like this one?” I giggled, twirling around in my dress.

“Hell yes!” Hannah exclaimed, jumping to run over to me. “If Jimin and Yoongi don’t drop to their knees and praise the almighty one that brought you to this world, then they’re not actually your soulmates.” Her words made me laugh even more. “Can I hug you? Or would that be awkward?”

“I don’t think it would be awkward.” As soon as I spoke the words, the blonde girl pulled me into a tight hug. “Thank you for everything, Hannah. I’m glad Jeongwoo has you as a soulmate.”

“Gosh darn it, Dakota! I bet you wanted me to cry today!” Both Hannah and I looked over to Jeongwoo, to find that he was actually crying.

“Jeongwoo? Why are you crying?”

The man sniffled. “Because you’re growing up so fast. I feel like I basically watched you grow up, and to see the woman you grew up to be, despite everything that has happened to you. I couldn’t be any happier to call myself your best friend.”

At his words, I almost started crying myself. “Jeongwoo, don’t make me cry. I didn’t spend all this time on my makeup just so you could make me cry it away.”

He laughed while still crying, walking over to me to pull me into a hug. “It’s just so great that you’re finally happy, Dakota. There was a long time there where I thought you would never be happy again.” He says into my hair, just so only I could really hear him. “I feel like I’ve succeeded at being your best friend now.”

I thought back to everything, despite me not wanting to recall my negative past. But I thought about it anyway. Would I be where I was without them leaving me? Would I still be happy with them? Maybe little eighteen year old me would have changed things, but being here in my best friend’s arms, about to head off to my first date with my soulmates, about to spend a wonderful night with them.

I wouldn’t change a thing.

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize if this is actual garbage. This hasn't been beta'd so if you find any errors in the work, please tell me!!


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